in the pink
by Aliathe
Summary: Sakura found it rather cruel how her distinctive pink hair had followed her all the way to her next life. [a collection of au drabbles where sakura is reborn into different pink-haired one piece characters]
1. C1: bandanna

**Summary:**

 _Sakura found it rather cruel how her distinctive pink hair had followed her all the way to her next life. [a collection of drabbles where sakura is reborn into different pink-haired one piece characters] [au] [gen]_

 **Disclaimer:**

 _I don't own One Piece, Naruto, or the cover picture's background._

* * *

 **-C1-**

.

The bell over the store's door jangled dully, dutifully, as it eased open.

Nola glanced up from the register, and smiled at the young boy who entered, hoping he was an actual customer, and not just another passerby ducking inside the shop to get out of the gray afternoon drizzle.

At first glance, she places him in the latter category, taking in his damp red jacket, thin red glasses, black slacks, and scuffed red open-toed sandals, along with the youth prominent in his rounded face. It's impossible to miss the pink of his chin-length hair, and Nola feels a brief pang of pity; such a feminine hair color, coupled with such a feminine bob, must have made him a surefire target for childhood teasing.

Altogether, the boy- for surely he isn't a man yet -can't be older than twelve, thirteen. Surely not old enough for serious shopping yet, and much less in the way of clothing.

Still, who knows? Nearly sixty years of storekeeping experience has taught her that youngsters often make the most impulse buys, and, if reluctant, were the easiest to convince into doing so anyway.

And this is a prime set-up: the boy, after taking a step inside and letting the door groan to a close behind him, first shakes off stray droplets like a well-groomed dog shedding rain, before glancing casually around the shop's interior offerings, one pale hand irritably tucking loose strands of hair behind his ears.

"Good afternoon, child," Nola addresses him warmly, peering over her counter. "Have you come to browse? We have a 2-for-1 sale on bandannas today; perfect for keeping hair neat, tidy, and out of the way. Just 300 beri, child."

The boy, if surprised by her sudden voice, doesn't show it. He turns towards her, flicks his dark eyes over her in rapid, unconscious assessment, and drew nearer to the counter display of said bandannas.

"I'll take a look," he thanks her agreeably, nodding politely, and then rested the same pale hand on the clear glass surface, fingers splayed. Contemplation crawled over his expression as he lowered his head as well, then tilted it to angle a better view of the assortment of colorful cloths.

Nola, in turn, rests her own wrinkly chin on her own wrinkly hands, and observes him observe the bandannas in silence.

Not a minute goes by before she can't resist breaking that silence. Rainy afternoons always mean a slow day in the store, and though time has beaten boredom out of her, it hasn't beaten curiosity.

"What brings you to our town today, child?" she asks. "It's not a bad place to live in, of course; I've been here my entire life. But all we have as attractions are a Marine base and an active marketplace for restocking supplies before the next island, and you're a little too young to be joining the Marines."

Not looking up, the red-jacketed boy shakes his head, pink hair swaying with the motion. "Fourteen is acceptable for seaman recruits," he corrects, firmly but not rudely.

Older than she thought he was, then.

With conviction, despite his quieter tone, he tells her, "I'm going to be a protector of the seas."

Nola believes him.

The two of them lapse into silence once more, but a more comfortable one, as the shopkeeper is sated with answers.

His hand passes dismissively over the yellow bandannas with orange circular patterns, and the green bandannas with white daisy-like patterns, then all of the other patterned bandannas entirely, before skittering to a stop over a pile of patternless, bright red ones.

"I'll take two of these," he says, calm, with a faint, wistful smile, tacking on a respectful, "ma'am."

"Remind you of something?" Nola inquires conversationally, bending down to remove two of the requested bandannas. "Or is it just to match your jacket?"

"My best friend," the boy shrugs, fondness evident in his tone, while he fishes three 100 beri coins out of his pocket and slides them across the counter. After a pause, in which Nola accepted the coins, he admits wryly, "I _do_ like red, though, so there _is_ a lot of it in my wardrobe."

They share smiles, and he watches patiently as she rings up the sale, tapping spidery, liver-spotted fingers over the clanking keys.

"Of course, the Marines prefer their recruits to wear the uniform," she absently half-jokes, half-warns, handing the bandannas over to him after he declined a shopping bag.

He laughs along, and takes his purchases, immediately using one to tie back his hair, which was beginning to assume a spikier appearance as it dried. The other one is folded and put in one of his pockets, the movement causing bandanna's bow-like 'ears' to brush against the back of his neck.

Halfway out the door, the pink-haired boy calls back with an answer, "I'm sure I'll make it to petty officer soon enough!"

Nola blinks, and laughs herself at his typical youthful confidence-bordering-on-arrogance.

But as the door groans shut again, she can't help but believe him, too.

.

One-and-a-half years later, Nola is unsurprised to be part of the crowd of townspeople sending off newly-promoted Petty Officer Floran Coby, to his reassignment to Loguetown for more training.

After all, there was only so much of a challenge their small, unremarkable, peaceful island could offer to a flourishing martial arts and medical prodigy.

Still, they're proud to have helped produce such a fine, promising example of a Marine, and Nola is proud to have contributed Coby's signature red bandanna to his by-now well-known characteristic red ensemble, which he'd never stopped wearing around town, and hadn't hesitated in using to replace the Marine-issued standard uniform as soon as 'petty officer' had been listed in his files.

And there he is now, standing on the deck of the slowly departing Marine ship, waving back cheerfully to the crowd.

Red bandanna, red glasses pushed up onto the bandanna, red jacket opened to reveal a red vest, his red jacket sleeves rolled up to his elbows. Trademark pink hair lightly shifting with the breeze, and the abrupt shift to black for the waist-down half of his outfit: black pants bandage-bound to his ankles, black closed-toe sandals tipped with a hard material Nola vaguely recognized as seastone, and even black seastone-knuckle gloves.

(Nobody quite knows what the white circles stitched onto Coby's jacket shoulders are for, but everybody agrees that they add pleasant symmetry.)

Gorn Nola is an old woman, but she believes in youth, and she believes in Floran Coby.

She believes that boy is going to go far, pink hair or not.

.

 **Sakura!Coby, Part I:**

 **Bandanna**


	2. Sh1: wail

**-Sh-**

.

Children adjust remarkably fast to changed surroundings: this is a fact.

By the time she's five, Sakura has learned to answer to 'Shirahoshi,' which is at least a marginally more imaginative name than _Sakura_ , and being a living, breathing, swimming mermaid no longer bothers her that much.

Oh, and she's a princess now.

Which is, honestly, a phase she grew out of around the time she started thinking of herself as a 'ninja' and not a 'civilian.' So... the novelty's a bit weird, and kinda freaks her out the first few months of consciousness, but she's gotten through it by determinedly pretending it was basically the same as becoming Hokage.

Not that she ever really wanted to be Hokage, but she's had enough practice cajoling Tsunade into doing her duties that she'd familiar with the basic aspects of rulership, more or less, and the finer points of it aren't too hard to grasp.

It secretly pleases her to be called a 'genius' by the palace tutors, even if she is guiltily aware that she's not a true genius on par with the likes of Itachi or Kakashi.

But Sakura was always known for and proud of three things back when everybody around her still knew her as 'Haruno Sakura': her healing, her strength, and her intellect. If she can't have her chakra in this new world (as a freaking _mermaid princess!_ ), and thus can't have her medical techniques or control-enhanced super-strength, than she at the very least wants her intellect. She clings to that remainder of her past identity, and, with some reluctance, to the pink hair that had somehow followed her through reincarnation.

Still. There's only so much time she can spend cooped up in the palace before getting restless aches in her fins. Her new mother's (who, frankly, had a name even less imaginative than 'Sakura') lessons about the surface are interesting to listen to, but they only make her even more restless.

Sakura had grown up under forests of Hashirama trees, feet planted on the ground; Shirahoshi can only float along on the ocean currents, and stare wistfully up through the coral reefs.

She doesn't know _exactly_ why the merfolk couldn't visit the humans above, as everybody is very careful to censor themselves around the young, impressionable, short-tempered and crying-prone princess, but, having been a human before, she knows enough about human nature to make some... not-nice guesses.

And as for the 'crying-prone' part, it's one of the things about this new body- another thing being the abnormal size -that continue to annoy her.

It's not like she _wants_ to be the stereotypical crybaby royalty, but Sakura's physically stuck as a five-year-old, no matter how mentally advanced she is, and that means she doesn't have nearly as much control over her reactions as her inner ninja demands.

Which means she involuntarily breaks out into tears at least once every waking hour, on average.

Sakura can't help it. She's aware of her prominent personality flaw of a tendency to blow her fuse suddenly and violently; in her past life, it meant punching the source of irritation. Usually Naruto.

In this life, it means reflexively tearing up, as she tries her hardest to avoid any other reflexive and far-too-childish-for-her-twenty-something-mindset actions, including but not limited to: smacking her tail aggressively against whatever flooring-substitute was closest (in lieu of any feet to stomp), opening her mouth to wail loudly, and sniffling in very pointed misery.

Not just anger, either. That would be far too simple. No, apparently she can't help but start silently _gushing_ teardrops whenever she got too happy, embarrassed, disappointed, etc.

She is, by this point in her re-life, fairly certain that if she weren't half-fish with the gills that came with it, she would've long ago died from crying-derived dehydration.

.

On a day when Sakura is sick of crying against her will, she performs her common habit of swimming off to the palace gardens, which has nearly no people to see any further fits.

Plus, there's a family of sea slugs in one of the corners, and she delights in practicing this particular new power on the animals that remind her so fondly of her old slug summons.

One of the younger slugs is pale white and dark blue, and bears an uncanny resemblance to Katsuyu. Sakura feels no shame in admitting (if only to herself) that she's gotten attached to them (singular 'them' for Katsuyu Jr., since, like most non-summon gastropods, sea slugs were mainly hermaphrodites). Routine visits are made to Katsuyu Jr., and she's contemplated more than a few times about just taking inside the palace as a pet. The other slugs wouldn't mind; from what her frequent conversations with them had gleaned, sea slugs didn't exactly have much emotion in the way of familial bonds. Katsuyu Jr., relatively simple-minded as they are, would probably be content anywhere with safety and enough food.

In fact, today is the day Sakura plans to move Katsuyu Jr. She's got her jar ready to coax them into, and she's got her argument ready to convince her parents into letting her keep a toxin-producing pet in the palace.

There's just one problem.

When she enters the gardens that day, making a beeline (or whatever the aquatic equivalent of a bee was) for the slugs' favored corner of the reef as the other creature inhabitants respectfully move out of her way, Katsuyu Jr.'s distinctive white-blue skin is nowhere to be seen.

She interrogates the leftover slugs.

The news is not good.

A passing lobster, hungry, had snatched up Katsuyu Jr. and a couple other slugs for a meal.

Logically, Sakura understands. It's just the cycle of life. Wholly ordinary circumstances that the surviving slugs are unaffected by. It was bound to come sooner or later. And anyway, Katsuya Jr. hadn't been a summon animal. Their arguable sentience, like the sentience of the slugs still alive to relay what had happened, was more of a dim, puppylike obedience that all of the creature-communicating merfolk commanded from them. She would find another pale white slug with uncannily similar markings soon enough, and if she didn't, what had been lost?

Then her five-year-old overemotional reflexes shove her twenty-something mental rationalizations out of the picture completely.

Sakura beats her oversized tail against the sandy floor, shakily pushes back a loose strand of pink hair, lets her mouth fall open and _wails_ , sobbing noisily and completely like the spoiled baby princess she's been for the last five years of remembrance.

.

She's facing the wall of the gardens' slug-territory when it happens.

Through her blurry tears messing up her vision, she has the closest-to-perfect view anyone gets that fateful day of the Sea King breaking it down.

.

The Sea King is a bit too big to fit into a jar, but her parents dazedly agree to let her keep it as a pet, anyway. On the condition that she makes it stay away from the easily-fainting palace staff.

Somebody suggests converting the Hard Shell Tower armory into a protective relocation for the very young, clearly fragile, and freshly discovered current form of Poseidon.

Sakura suggests in _somebody's_ ear that they should go stuff their malfunctioning cranium in the nearest volcanic vent, with a sweetly foreboding smile that Naruto would recognize and quail at. She also thumps her imposingly large tail meaningfully against the palace tiling for emphasis, while otherwise looking all the world like a child innocently throwing a tantrum, sparkling tears conjured at the edges of her eyes to serve their only useful purpose: guilt-tripping.

Her family melts into cooing sympathy, the 'somebody' nervously flaps their gills shut, and everybody hastily decides that _obviously_ the prodigious genius daughter of the royal family could handle herself, despite not even reaching one-sixth of the splitting age.

Still, the Hard Shell Tower armory conversion is shelved as a possible future prospect, and until then, Sakura visits Katsuyu III in the gardens at regular check-in times throughout the day, letting them roam freely to hunt and play otherwise.

.

Shortly after Princess Shirahoshi's widely-celebrated sixth birthday is commemorated with a lavish and doting birthday party held by the palace, a ship is sighted heading for their kingdom.

Queen Otohime bravely swims up to meet it, against the tearful protests of her concerned family (the _very_ tearful protests on behalf of her youngest daughter).

Then Princess Shirahoshi's infamous Sea King 'pet,' a massive, mottled blue and speckled white monstrosity with far too many sharp teeth, with a girth hefty enough to bodyslam a mountain (and, 9 times out of 10, at least tie), trails her from a distance, settling many fears of the populace.

(The leftover fears of the populace are mostly private worries about the much beloved pink-haired princess growing up to be a Sea King version of a crazy old catfish lady.

There are, after all, very suspicious rumors about her collecting more 'pets.'

A gigantic mermaid as distinctively colored as Princess Shirahoshi isn't easy to miss venturing [under heavy guard] towards the deeper, more dangerous areas.)

.

 **Sakura!Shirahoshi, Part I:**

 **Wail**

.

 _Bonus:_

 _The question on everybody's bewildered and apprehensive minds, after the latest Poseidon (the adored and adorable youngest princess) announced she was keeping the Sea King as a pet, and referred to it as 'Katsuyu the Third,' was:_

 _If that's Katsuyu the Third, are there another two 'pet' Sea Kings lurking around the kingdom!?_


	3. C2: home

**-C-**

.

The question was bound to come sooner or later.

Ripple Isle's most common visitors were just merchant ships landing to unload and refuel, or the occasional Marine ship come evaluate the 30th Branch.

It was rare for the latter to happen, since not much of note happened in quiet, small East Blue islands like Ripple Isle, and thus the overstretched Marine forces were usually put to better use in the ever-chaotic Grand Line. And there were only so many times one could go market-browsing on off-days before becoming severely bored.

Bored Marines were curious Marines.

Floran Coby, the newest seaman recruit, offered plenty to be curious about.

He politely mingled, but, noticeably, didn't ever really socialize. When in the mess hall, he sat slightly apart from the crowd, and ate with efficiently precise movements, the exact antithesis of the typical exhausted-from-boot-camp sloppy greenhorn gorging. 'Exhausted-from-boot-camp,' actually, wasn't ever an accurate description of his state, since he seemed perfectly fine and used to the exercise, despite being the young enough to still qualify as a chore boy. In his free time, he chatted up the nurses, but, unlike the other Marines, it was in a way that was obviously far more interested in their brains than in their busts.

Oh. And on the first day of initiation, when performing a practice spar with a more experienced, brawnier seaman first class, his opponent had jokingly made a jab about Floran's hair.

Something flashed across his face right then. It managed to look foreboding, even with the baby fat still clinging to his cheeks.

Floran had then proceeded to smile gently, before darting forward and viciously _shattering_ his would-be taunter's dominant arm with a single punch.

The instructor believed the younger, innocently wide-eyed recruit's 'bewildered' apology about forgetting his own strength sometimes.

Everybody else had not; which is to say, all of the seaman apprentices and recruits spectating the traditional starter assessment, and the first class opponent cradling his arm with shellshocked eyes.

Afterwards, none of them dared to risk saying anything, derogatory or otherwise, about the pink-haired boy's hair color within his deceptively large hearing.

(It didn't stop him from brutally beating all of those unfortunate enough to end up as his sparring partner, but at least it meant it wasn't really _personal_. He had unusual strength, and his fighting style was built around that. Nothing more, nothing less.)

But Floran was definitely an interesting puzzle, and on a languid, lazy summer Sunday, about three months after he'd signed up and promptly tested out of 'chore boy,' a gaggle of fellow recruits and equally curious apprentices approached Floran during lunchtime, the only time on off-days when he wasn't poring over borrowed medical texts, down around in town, practicing personal katas in the training grounds, or absorbed in some other closed-off activity.

One of them gathered up their courage, and nervously posed the question as the group neared Floran's table, a bob of pink hair glancing up with detached expectation.

.

"So..." the apprentice, Jal Finn, began awkwardly, trading glances with those behind him. He blinked, and told himself firmly that he shouldn't be so intimidated by this young, slim, _pink_ -haired _recruit_ , no matter how scary strong his punches were.

"So," Finn began again, stronger, "me and the guys were just wondering where you're from. Ripple Isle's not exactly well-known, and our branch ain't really famous, either."

Floran smiled- it was, luckily, not his 'gentle' smile that had soon become infamous around the base's training grounds and sparring rings -and answered, amiably enough, "I'm sure you wouldn't have heard of it. My home's even less well-known than Ripple Isle. We keep to ourselves, and barely ever see a passing ship."

There were nods all around; it wasn't an unreasonable explanation, nor a stretch to believe.

There were plenty of small islands dotting the seas that, if casually mentioned, would make even the most studious scholar hard-pressed to recall. It wasn't that they were particularly difficult to get to, or dangerous to find. They were just... not really worth remembering. Tiny fishing and agricultural communities and the like, who didn't cause a fuss, avoided attention and trouble (which often followed attention) like the plague, and only visited larger neighboring lands for items they couldn't produce themselves.

People began to relax, and draw closer, now that Floran had proven to be both far less aggressive than rumors had built him up to be, and had proven to no longer be a total mystery. This fighting prodigy with an interest in medicine hadn't stepped off the Ripple Isle boat and into existence one day. He had a home; he had an origin. He was as human as they were.

Finn dared to take a seat across from his junior of four years, tentatively commiserating, "Yeah? I know what it's like; I mean, who's ever heard of Frog Farm? I can understand why you were quick to leave; by the time I was eight, I was sick of recipes with frog, and I knew I didn't want to be a frog farmer like my old man."

"Oh, it wasn't like that," Floran quickly demurred, flexing his fingers. The audience inched back slightly, but the motion seemed unconscious, and relatively harmless. He continued with a distant air of reminiscence, "I just... always remembered I had something to do. To protect."

There were quirked eyebrows at that odd choice of 'remember' instead of 'felt.' The pink-haired boy either didn't notice or ignored it.

Pulling down his red reading glasses onto the bridge of his nose, Floran stood up, tray in hand, ready to throw it away and leave.

A pointed pause was offered, as if to say, 'I'll take one last question.'

Somewhere near the back of the crowd, a voice called, "What was your home like, if you won't say the name?"

Silence struck down, so similar in feel to the flash of foreboding that many expected the prodigy to break another arm or two.

Instead, Floran let out a breath none knew he'd held, and, his carefully lowered shoulders facing away from the group, said with odd emphasis, "My _home_ had forests everywhere. We were taught that they were Hashirama trees, after our village's founder."

He very calmly dropped off his dishes and walked out of the dining hall.

Later, a distinctive pink bob was spotted in furious movement in one of the indoors training rooms.

Everybody avoided it, and were relived to see Floran nonchalantly flipping through another obscure medical tome the next morning at breakfast.

.

 **Sakura!Coby Part 2:**

 **Home**


	4. C3: mentors

**-C-**

.

The third most common question posed to eighteen-year-old Ensign Floran Coby is, "How the _hell_ do you handle Garp so well?"

(First most common question is, "is your hair _seriously_ _naturally_ pink?" Second most common question is, "no, really, isn't that kind of a sissy color?"

People who survived asking the first and second most common questions usually weren't in any shape to be asking the third.)

Monkey D. Garp, vice-admiral of the Marines and current mentor to their newest little hand-to-hand prodigy, is generally acknowledged by all who've personally met him for more than five minutes to be a difficult, not very intelligent, obnoxiously boisterous, monstrously strong, impulsive, hot-headed, eccentric, gluttonous, and forceful man by all means.

When there is a problem he considers petty, he prefers to resolve things in his favor- with his Fist of Justice (and agonizing pain).

Really, learning under him is downright _nostalgic_ for Sakura.

.

Many of those terms used to describe Garp fit Tsunade as well- so long as you flip 'not very intelligent' to 'doesn't know when to quit at gambling,' 'obnoxiously boisterous' to 'frequently drunk at inappropriate times,' and 'gluttonous' to 'a very worrying alcohol problem' -, and her 'handling' of him has been learned from her experience with corralling her former mentor.

It's quite easy, once she boiled it down to scenarios and solutions.

If he falls asleep in the middle of something? For not urgent cases, Sakura moves him out of the way, briefs him what happened when he wakes up, and in between, tries to either stand-in for him or _find_ a stand-in. For urgent cases, she tries to wake him up as fast as possible, which may or may not include the faintly ridiculous (but undeniably effective) method of waving a donut under his nose.

If he isn't the mood to hear any excuses or explanations (which he will interpret as excuses)? Get the hell out of the way, warn others to flee if time allows, and either wait for him to cool down and come to terms with his own brand of screwy logic, or bravely make the sacrifice of weathering his punch(-es, depending on how angry he is about the subject).

If he wants to burst through walls 'to look cooler' and order his subordinates to repair the damage? Bow to the inevitability of his whims persisting, apologize to the owner of the broken walls, and take the compensation out of his paycheck.

If he goes off on another rant about his no-good ungrateful grandsons frolicking off to be pirates instead of respectable Marines? Let him complain, nod encouragingly while looking attentive, and make occasional sympathetic noises.

Also, in her personal case, the last scenario often included weathering a 'playful' punch to the shoulder as Garp went on to declare some variant of, "Coby, m'boy, you're the fine Marine grandson I never had! Bwahahahaha! Now get me another rice cracker, and gimme a hundred more push-ups!"

(Very carefully, she avoids ever telling him that she only became a Marine because the other option was this world's version of being rogue or missing nin.

Oh. And nobody really liked bounty hunters back in the Elemental Nations. They made enemies by the bushel and allies by the blue moon.

In comparison, a government-backed law-keeping force sounded pretty much the closest thing they seemed to have for ninja.)

Sakura has never been so fervently grateful to have unlocked this chakra-replacement "Armament Haki" before she got transferred to Garp as his unofficial protege. She's fairly certain she would've suffered grievous brain damage by now from his skull-punches, and grievous bodily damage from his other punches.

Bogard holds her impressed respect as well, as Shizune's counterpart to Tsunade's Garp; 27 years as his right hand, and not have keeled over from stress by now?

Her own composure is only this steady and unruffled from another lifetime of high-tension warfare, and having literally died and gotten better.

Still, there are far worse people to serve under than pseudo-Tsunade.

Like Sakazuki, who always gave her a distinct pseudo-Danzo vibe.

Or, no, that's not really accurate.

A psuedo-A, the Fourth Raikage, going off of what Tsunade had often let slip in her drunken complaining sessions?

She mulls over this pleasantly amusing game of trying to match up people 'Haruno Sakura' knew with people 'Floran Coby' know, as she walked towards the gangplank to greet the new chore boy they'd come to pick up from the 153rd Branch. Helmeppo, is it?

.

"How the _hell_ do you handle Garp so well?" yet another Marine exclaims in disbelief, after watching "Bone-Breaker" Floran calmly convince Garp "The Fist" to visit the island's donut shop, and leave the 'boring, fiddly paperwork stuff to us.'

The pink-haired teenager, and one of the youngest Ensigns yet, just straightened his clipboard and smiled fondly. "I don't; _we_ don't, as his crew. We work around him, and he gives us things to work _around_. It works. In fact, he reminds me a lot of my old mentor- who would bash in your head and then shatter apart a few mountains if you ever implied she was getting older or weaker."

 _'There's another monster like Garp out there!?'_ the questioner mentally sweat-dropped.

"Now," Floran added briskly, smile growing sharper, "if we can move onto the shipment of seastone we came here to load up on?"

A shiver involuntarily ran down the other's spine. It was a perfectly sweet smile, calm and collected, that nevertheless caused intense discomfort and a sense of approaching doom for those on the receiving end.

(For some reason he couldn't quite pin down, he was reminded of the smiles given by any medical professional when faced with a commonly unruly patient stubbornly refusing treatment or rest.)

He quickly lead the way to the warehouse, and breathed a sigh of relief once the vice admiral's ship departed their port.

.

 **Sakura!Coby Part 3:**

 **Mentors**


	5. B1: hellion

**-B-**

.

Being reborn wreaks havoc with your sense of self.

Sakura fully admits she was a horrible little hellion child in her second life- a glaring contrast to her stickler by-the-book teacher's pet childhood in the Leaf.

In her defense, she spent most of those first six years trying to reconcile her wartime mental instincts with her painfully soft civilian reflexes. The next three years were spent first in denial of the Elemental Nations having been a dream, then of the possibility that this new world was some afterlife illusion created by a cruel god, and finally of whether she was 'Haruno Sakura,' the strong kunoichi of the Fourth Shinobi War, or 'Bell-mere,' the orphan of the tangerine grove without a last name.

Cocoyashi Village's inhabitants were _saints_ for putting up with her through her, well, tantrums.

They probably all breathed a sigh of relief when she began getting a grip on herself again around age ten. Genzo, that hypocritical thief, never stopped calling her a 'thug' and a 'troublemaker,' though.

She could easily kick his ass, though, so she wasn't worried.

The state of the world she'd (unwillingly) left behind, however, _did_ worry her for quite a bit continuing her 'reformation.' From the best she could remember, Sakura had died right as their rather grim situation had become more hopeless: ensnared by the strange, chakra-draining tree-thing-that-definitely-wasn't-a-real-tree Obito had somehow conjured.

Probably things went even deeper into hell after that point. She was just unlucky enough to have been at the wrong place and the worst time.

It was almost embarrassing, actually, considering she'd told the finally reunited Team Seven, not long before, that she wasn't the weak little girl they remembered anymore. And then she went and died. At least she survived a meteorite, right?

... Or, maybe things got better, somehow, some way. True, they would've needed a couple of miracles to defeat the power of the Ten Tails, the army of zombie plants-things-that-definitely-weren't-real-plants, whatever insane aces Kabuto had up his sleeve, and not to mention Uchiha Madara, but miracles tended to be given away like candy around Naruto.

He had the luck of a demon.

And besides, it wasn't like there was an even more overpowered, maniacal villain about to pop up at the end, like- like- like some rabbit goddess descending from the moon.

That only happened in stories.

Still, Sakura's uncertainty was- not _killing_ her, because having _been_ killed once before she was very careful about using the term so casually -stressing her out, and her resolve to stop acting so poorly towards the considerate villagers only meant that instead of channeling her conflicted emotions into kicking up a fuss, she threw herself into getting back into shape with the determination of somebody possessed. Daily training consisted of all of the katas she recalled from her first life, then all of the practices and drills that her mind clearly retained, if not her body.

Boulders were punched, then pulverized. Cocoyashi's shoreline was reshaped on a roughly bihourly basis from her runs. It's namesake coconuts, if they could, would've quailed in fear at her (silent, because stealth, even if Naruto and Sasuke had never bothered much with it, was _supposed_ to be an essential ninja skill) approach.

In other news, she got a lot of free coconuts after they dropped from the force of her kicks and hits. Which was good, since Sakura got sick of snacking on tangerines whenever she ate them for more than three days.

But finances were a problem, no matter _how_ generous the villagers were to the poor orphan with no means of income or support beyond her grove.

Anyway, living off their generosity also made her squirm uncomfortably inside. Even Naruto, who lacked tact in the best of times, would understand the basic ninja squeamishness with owing a debt to them. That they obviously didn't expect her to pay back that debt only made her feel worse.

She shouldn't be surviving off another's _charity_. She was an independent, fierce, talented kunoichi who had worked her ass off to even remotely catch up to the two monsters on her team! She had been an apprentice of Tsunade the Slug Sannin herself! She could punch a mountain into pieces, and heal fatal wounds with a touch!

Well, no, not the last one anymore, because this world didn't have the same chakra systems as the Elemental Nations. People didn't use it; couldn't. There was plenty of ambient energy in the air that seemed somewhat similar, however, and it was what naturally enhanced the denizens of this place, granting them strength and endurance and speed that wouldn't be possible without chakra manipulation in her past world. All of the villagers didn't appear aware of it, though. It worked for them as an unconscious augmentation, reacting to their emotions, such as an angry mother stomping cracks into the sidewalk, or a mischievous kid running abnormally fast away from a chasing shopkeeper.

People's faces also contorted in vastly more dramatic ways than what the Nations' considered possible. Their eyes bugged out exxageratedly in surprise, or their mouths dropped inhumanly low, and nobody ever seemed to consider it out-of-place.

Strange.

Or as Tsunade might say in one of her blunter, drunker moments, "That's some fucking weird shit right there. But eh, whatever."

Regardless, learning to harness the ambient energy that-may-or-may-not-be-a-slightly-different-form-of-sage-chakra was time-consuming, annoying, and a long list of expletives she learned from Tsunade when she was _really_ pissed at something. Or someone. Or some _ones_. Who were often the Council.

In her usual way of stress relief, Sakura gathered up her frustration at failing to grab onto the slippery, just-out-of-reach chakra-replacement, and went down to the shoreline to find a few boulders to use as punchingbags.

A spike of particularly aggravated rage coincided with a particularly aggressive punch downwards into the sand (after failing to find any rocks she hadn't already broken months ago), and... something happened. Connected. Worked?

Hell, _she_ didn't know, but her fist flashed darker as it drove south and the formerly-coy chakra-replacement suddenly surged to-

The closest thing Sakura could compare it to was chakra reinforcement, further cementing the energy's title in her mind as 'chakra-replacement.'

Of course, the punch's force and shockwave kicked up a veritable sandstorm. Luckily, as she was in the epicenter of the hit, all of the sand was blown away from her, and the much-abused coconut trees suffered yet another indignity of getting sand in places trees should never have to get sand.

Sakura had grinned at her shiny black-armored fist, flexed her fingers, then easily dismissed and recalled the chakra-replacement.

"I can work with this," she spoke up to the blue, perfectly clear sky.

And it was such, that, at the warily responsible age of fifteen, Bell-mere of the Tangerine Grove set off from Cocoyashi Village to be a law-enforcing, paycheck-paid, villain-punching Marine, with the cautious blessings of the villagers who saw her off.

.

 **Sakura!Bell-mere Part 1:**

 **Hellion**


	6. B2: adrenaline

**-B-**

.

Being a Marine is . . . fine.

That's all she can really say about it.

Her job is fine. She _does_ her job fine. Her coworkers are fine and they _think_ she's fine. All . . . just _fine_.

For lack of a family name to present, Sakura registers as Bell-mere of the Orange Grove. She climbs the ranks, as a result of steady success in smashing in the faces of government-declared criminals, and even receives her own epithet: "Hundred Fist," in reference to the number of people she could supposedly demolish with one Armamented blow.

(She supposes she's decent at shooting, too; at least, this new body seems to have a natural talent for rifles. Still, she doesn't devote as much time on refining her firearm skills as she does on learning entirely new taijutsu styles - martial arts, this world calls them. Punches don't run out of ammunition or require specific maintenance, after all, and Sakura's always preferred that personal touch.)

'Lieutenant Commander' is reached in no time, and 'Captain' comes even swifter. Soon, she's walking 'round her own ship of subordinates, the weight of justice hanging heavy on her shoulders. Literally - all ensigns and up get a jacket as part of their uniform, with 'Justice' stitched onto the back in kanji. It seems to be the fashion to wear it like a cape, and she finds no reason to buck that trend. The large white coat also bears a vague resemblance to the Yondaime's trademark jacket, and what she likes to imagine Naruto might wear if he'd made it into his dream job in the end-

No. Not 'if.' _When_ he'd made it, because she had to believe that he did, she had to believe that they'd won and he'd lived and everybody'd triumphed, _she had to believe that her death had not been for nothing_. She- she- she _had_ to believe.

. . . regardless, wearing the makeshift cape as a sort of secret, silent homage to her past life gives her a pleasant tingly feel and certain tilt to her lips when she lingers on it. It's a small comfort, and one that helps in getting her through the more exhausting days. There's no end to the work needing to be done, after all; there's no end to the justice needing to be dealt. And while she in no way regretted her previous, proud existence of a morally-dubious ninja, it was _nice_ , in a way, to experience the change of being a. . . much _lighter_ shade of gray, for the most part. She whaled on all the ne'er-do-wells she liked, helped all the random civilians she wanted, and the genuine gratefulness she usually got from a saved victim was a _warmer_ glow, than the satisfaction of yet another perfectly pulled-off assassination via untraceable medical jutsu had ever been.

But, all the same? None of it is particularly exciting. None of it really gets her blood pumping.

If she'd died at any time before the Fourth War, or even at any time after, maybe she wouldn't be like this- this- this _adrenaline addict_. She thought it was just her mentality adjustment from her last life, yet the itch to move and the urge to hit something and see it _hurt_ never really fades. Something has changed inside, irrevocably changed, somewhere some _time_ in the process of Haruno Sakura learning to stand strong on her own two feet. When she's not too engulfed in the latest pirate-hunting mission, her own restlessness scares her just a little in the prospect of one day going to far in a friendly spar, blind to her strength.

Not to say that the Marine life itself doesn't contain plenty of bloodshed. Because there is. There's fighting and there's deaths since casualties come fast and heavy whenever both sides clash. And it's always sad, it never _stops_ being sad until one stops being human, but it's just, well, life. A truth she's gotten used to quick, both from the medic mindset of holding life and death in one's green-glowing palms, and from the war she herself had ultimately become a casualty of.

Bloodshed is far too easy to achieve, though, and anyway, that's not necessarily what she wants. What Sakura wants is. . . what _Bell-mere_ wants is a good, guilt-free fight, no holds barred, where she can reach for that shade of her Tsunade-taught strength without worry of breaking something (some _body_ ) important she can't put back together, and scratch that itch _good_ with a rocketing pulse and the sweet savory ache of a tired body spent well.

Great, she sounds like some fighting freak.

Which she isn't! She's _not_ , really. She's a medic, or was a medic, and some part of her heart and soul stays a medic forever, with that knowledge of _exactly_ how _exasperating_ it is to browbeat patients into staying in their beds, instead of escaping by window to happily pick another fight, one that will inevitably land them right back in the hospital. So she _knows_ the consequences of violence, thank you very much.

It's just that, in the end, she's also a _combat_ medic forever, and maybe even more integral to her core identity, she's still a _Team Seven_ member forever. Fractured and Issues-laden (with a firmly capitalized 'I') as they were, one thing no-one ever accused them of was shying away from a fight. They'd been all together too eager to jump into fights, really - a trait she could now think back on fondly, instead of despairingly, after time and distance (so much distance and indeterminable time) had smoothed some of the edges from her memories.

Long story short, when the mission for a difficult battle with a band of notoriously slippery pirates comes up, Sakura jumps at the chance.

.

 **Sakura!Bell-mere Part 2:**

 **Adrenaline**


	7. B3: impulse

**-B-**

 **.**

It had been a difficult fight, as promised. The unexpected torrent drowning out from the darkened skies had blurred visibility, muffled sound, messed with the terrain's footing, dragged down clothes, and generally done all it could to make things worse for both sides. A few times, she nearly thought that this was it, this was the end, but she always recovered from whatever misstep she'd faltered in. Armament Haki had definitely saved her life at least once from what _would've_ been a lucky fatal hit, otherwise. Still, she counted it as a decisive victory; the pirates had been subdued (and were now locked up below-board awaiting transport to a prison facility), none of her crew had been lost, and they'd overcome unfavorable odds to complete their goal, even though the battle had spilled over onto a close-by island the moment the storm proved too detrimental for a ship-fight.

Sakura was smiling with the exultation of triumph by the end of it all.

They couldn't leave just yet, however. Well, fine; they _could_ , but they wouldn't. The aftermath of a big fight like that one always included damage control. At least, _her_ crew knew very well that their captain liked to put _some_ effort into taking care of their messes, unlike some other Marine ships she could name who all had _'grievous property damage'_ as their middle name.

Ahem. Back to the point.

Damage control meant sifting through rubble to aid in finding trapped survivors, offering apologies and first aid for any wounded, and generally providing a sense of calm order to organize and rally the bewildered villagers. Sakura herself usually served as a beacon of patient (but only so far) authority for answering any questions harbored by both Marines and civilians, but had determined, today, that the unfortunate weather made it more pressing for her to chip in at excavation duty. Wait too long, and survivors might not survive the night, or the mud-brick buildings might get watered down to suffocating mud. It was simple work, anyway, and she had brute strength to spare.

It was also a necessary jolt of sobriety. Every now and then, she thought it was important to remember that being a Marine wasn't so different from being a ninja after all. In the end, it was the bystanders who bore the silent, unacknowledged brunt of their actions. Looking at the collapsed houses, hauling away broken wood beams and crude shingles, hearing the worried cries of families separated by the crash of debris; 'regret' wasn't the right word for what coiled in her abdomen and settled, shifting and heavy. Maybe. . . 'acceptance?'

The last house for her assigned search area yielded no results until the very end, when a yell of, "Anybody in here? Hello? Marine rescue is here? Hello?", got a faint, whispery response that she could barely catch as, "Hello?" Through a twisted game of 'Hot and Cold,' she managed to track down the responder to underneath the large porch, where a small part had remained intact. A large piece of rubble was blocking the 'entrance' to what she guessed was the roughly cubic area her mysterious responder had taken shelter. Likely a child, then - the porch wasn't high enough for any more than a preteen or early teenager sitting down. When she easily hauled the rubble out of the way with a touch of Armament, she saw she'd been half-correct.

It was a child, yes, of maybe toddler age and with a shock of blue hair, but there was also a bundle of blankets beside her hunched body. The bundle turned with the child to face the sudden (if still drizzling and dim) light, revealing a chubby, squinted face she could've mistaken as a tiny doll's if not for the previous movement. Okay. Little girl and littler kid. She could deal with this.

"Hey there," Sakura greeted, bending a bit to reduce the height difference, stepping back a step to not seem threatening, softening her habitually commanding tone to something approaching 'kind.' "Where are your parents? Did they leave already?" There's nobody else in the place; she'd checked, calling. The toddler had been the only one to answer.

And she answered her now, flicking her eyes up at Sakura's reassuring expression and recognizably white Marine uniform, water dripping down the sides of her face from her damp strands of hair, then flicking them down, back to the swaddled form next to her. "They-" She sounded distant, like everything hadn't quite sunk in yet. She smoothed a cloth fold, patted down another, and spoke in a short, halting, high-pitched voice. "They were having dinner. With the neighbors next door. I was playing here, watching over their baby. Like a big girl. Then the big thunder sound came except it wasn't thunder and it made the roof fall in and someone screamed then didn't and I was scared and it was dark but I sat tight and stayed still with Baby because I couldn't get out until the noise outside stopped and you came and moved the block," she finished in a rush, all at once, before pausing and sniffling loudly, in a way that made it clear she was trying to act brave by _discreetly_ not crying.

If she actually cried, Sakura couldn't tell. There was still water dripping from the toddler's hair, the light was still pretty bad, and her face was still ducked down.

She was about to usher them as nicely as possible towards the makeshift refugee tents set up outside the ruined village, for them to be somebody else's problem to mind, when she inexplicably hesitated, dirtied fingers freezing halfway in the motions. There was no real reason to stop, of course; in a small, close-knit town like this, it was probable that nobody would mind raising them like Cocoyashi had raised her. Even if they seemed to be the only children orphaned by the fight, whose adrenaline high she was still floating down from.

Blue Hair shivered, and weakly raised her chin to meet gazes, one thin arm protectively cradling the bundled-up Orange Hair, who certainly looked young and genderless enough to qualify as a baby. And who also looked about ready to develop a cold.

Blue- and orange-haired orphans huddled in the rain. . .

Sakura knew the tragic story of Nagato-turned-Pein, Yahiko-turned-Pein's-body, and Konan. It wasn't common knowledge, but it had been a personal matter to Jiraiya, and thus a personal matter to Naruto, whose personal matters always made their way into being Team Seven's personal matters. (Not that she, at least, had ever resented shouldering his burdens right alongside him.) That situation didn't exactly match up with this one - for one, there wasn't a redhead with too much power in his eyes, for another, Orange Hair wasn't about the same age - but there was enough of a superficial resemblance to make her wait. And think. Wait for what, and think about what, she wasn't quite sure, but she stood there for long enough, just blankly looking down at them and being blankly looked right back up to, that a petty officer under her command came to fetch her.

"Captain Belle-mere!" the man a little older than her saluted crisply. "Ma'am, we've corralled the civilians and are readying to leave!" He glanced at the children, briefly, then back to her. "Are they more refugees to be directed to the tents, ma'am? I can take them there if you're heading right to the ship."

Shellshocked as she must have been, Blue Hair seemed to have gotten the gist of what was being discussed rapid-fire above her head, even if Orange Hair looked more or less completely out of it, and she coughed with defeat: a truly itty-bitty, piteous sound.

Her heart melted. Just a little bit.

An impulse hit.

"No," Sakura said, almost automatically. She blinked a few times, shook her head, set her jaw at a stubborn angle that immediately provoked a low groan of familiarity from the other Marine. "No. I'll take them in."

"B-But _Captain Bell-mere!_ " he cried, wide-eyed and comically drop-mouthed. "You can't just _say_ something like that, ma'am! And- and anyway, have you even _asked_ the kids!?"

She sniffed haughtily, still stubborn-jawed, and reflexively snapped back, _"I'm asking right now!"_ , before turning on her heels, and abruptly throwing away her scowl at the sight of Blue Hair's scared, confused face. Orange Hair had buried her face into Blue Hair's shoulder, sniffling pathetically.

An uncertainty and shyness she hadn't felt since her genin days took root in her suddenly clenched stomach, as she crouched down to pose the invitation as gently as her awkwardness knew how. "Would. . . would you two like to come with me? Um. Live, with me? I- I think I'm going to retire after this," she decided on the spot, ignoring her subordinate's strangled gasp of surprise.

A silent, questioning blink came from the older and more coherent of the two. "Adoption!" Sakura hastily tacked on, blurting out in a ramble, "We could be a family. If you want. Me and you and the baby. I can be your mother! I'll try, I mean. But you don't have to call me 'mother' if you don't want to, of course, and-"

Tentatively, Blue Hair nodded, cutting her off immediately. She slowly reached for her with one childish hand, as if afraid the woman was going to disappear when they met skin. Sakura took it, firmly, but carefully, and marveled with wonder at the absolute _softness_ of her tiny fingers engulfed within her own aged and callused ones. The swaddled-up infant was taken into the crook of her own arm, to relieve Blue Hair when she struggled with determination to her feet, nearly slipping on a patch of mud, even with support. One arm securing the baby, the other one hand-holding with the toddler, Sakura shared a small, hopeful smile with Blue Hair, whose eyes were bright with unshed tears. Mr. Petty Officer was considerate enough to keep quiet during the touching moment between the new family, and he very definitely was not muffling tears of happiness with his sleeve.

Then Orange Hair regained consciousness just long enough to sneeze icky globs of snot all over her already battle-ruined uniform before promptly passing out cold.

Blue Hair, trying hard to blink back the tears, looked a little sheepish with secondhand embarrassment, and offered her the rain-soaked bottom of her half-torn shirt as a rag. "So you can get rid of the germs," she explained sagely, before adorably wilting a little at the likely recited lesson from a now-deceased parent.

Okay. Blue Hair was totally going to be her favorite pseudo-child. Even if Orange Hair was only a baby and couldn't possibly know better.

Sakura smiled, suddenly very, very tired from her day, and refused the 'handkerchief.' "These clothes are pretty much done for, anyway," she confided to her new favorite. "I'll just shower and change on board my ship." She was, for this assurance, rewarded with a grave and serious nod from Blue Hair, which was just, gah, too cute. A delirious squeal was successfully bitten back, and their little trio headed happily to said ship, trailed at a distance by the exasperated petty officer with an expression of fond long-suffering. It wasn't until her rescues were napping happily on an empty infirmary bed, cleaned and fed and clothed anew, with her standing there sleep-deprived above them, nursing a growing flame of helpless adoration in her chest, that she belatedly realized she probably should've asked for their names by now.

Oh well.

They'll still be here tomorrow.

They were her. . . daughters, now, after all.

'Daughters.'

Sakura smiled again, this one a serene curve of her mouth that masked the immediately roiling jumble of panic beneath.

 _Wait. 'Daughters?' ...I'm not ready to be a mother oh shit what do I do why did I do that I know nothing about parenting I'm not even twenty-five yet holy FUCK okay fuck you this reincarnation nonsense doesn't matter I can stay twenty-something forever if I want to just take a look at Tsunade but no back to the point well Genzo's going to cry how young do you need to be to digest tangerines safely I need to find a childcare LIBRARY literally as soon as I land do I even have maternal instincts is this what I'm feeling maternal instincts can I still fight though who can I still fight though I want to fight the world right now godDAMNIT I'm going to be a terrible influence-_

She had the terrible suspicion that if Inner was still with her, the amalgamation of her emotional repression be cackling hysterically at her expense right now.

Yeah, no. As soon as Blue Hair awakened, Sakura resolved to retract her earlier claim of adoptive title to 'older sister'. That, she thought she could handle. Just do the exact opposite of what Itachi did to drive Sasuke to a mental break. Simple.

She was still marching straight to the nearest library once they docked, of course. When in a doubt that couldn't be violence'd, read a book!

 **.**

 **Sakura!Bell-mere Part 3:**

 **Impulse**


	8. P1: mirror

**-P-**

 **.**

It was a source of mild shame to her that the first time she'd snuck a glimpse at her new body's reflection, she'd blanched at the dark, perfectly round eyes with thick lower lashes. Her hair being pink again had been relatively unsurprising in comparison. If rebirth with Lee's eyes was meant to be some sort of cruel cosmic joke, at how unfairly she'd initially treated the earnest (if way too dense at taking a hint) taijutsu-specialist she'd eventually fallen into comfortable camaraderie with, then having her trademark hair color made for a logical punchline.

The short toddler strands were a few shades off, being brighter than her past pastel, but it was _distressingly_ easy to look at herself and envision being her own and Lee's impossible lovechild.

Which was an intensely disturbing thought, not because she was still negatively biased against the man, but because both of them were happily involved with other people, with children of their own to look after already. Metal Lee was a nice boy, if unnerving in how similar he was to Lee, as Lee had been to Guy, and she was perfectly content with her routine of hospital rounds, scolding Naruto, raising Sarada right, socializing with similarly satisfied-with-life friends, and composing increasingly conflicted never-to-be-sent mental letters to the still-traveling Sasuke mostly along the lines of: _Dear,_ _I understand you've been on a very top-secret mission whose purpose I shouldn't even be thinking too hard about since Sarada was too young to remember, and I entirely support you in your career like you've supported me, but can't you at least write or send a birthday gift or something to your blood child from time to time so that Sarada knows she does actually have a father who cares out there?_

Well. She _had_ been perfectly content with that peaceful routine - you could never get _enough_ peace, after learning firsthand the grimness of war - until she'd died unexpectedly from the surprise attack during Sarada's Chuunin Exams, by the two who'd claimed to be of the Otsutsuki clan. She sighed, and her toddler self-image sighed along with her in the mirror. _It was always the Chuunin Exams, huh. Evacuating civilians, healing critically injured unfortunates, getting hit by a barrage of those diverse attacks at precisely the wrong moment while also running low on chakra. . ._

Still, she wasn't upset. Oh, it had been a fairly unimpressive and disappointing way to go out, of course, and even mildly embarrassing if you considered her accomplishments otherwise, but Sakura had made her peace with her death shortly into her new life. Living until middle age was an accomplishment in and of itself for a ninja, and she was proud of her village, her legacy, her family. A soldier, a medic, a mother: she'd accumulated identities like a dull textbook accumulated dust. She also had firm faith in them all to carry on without her, and was confident in her taciturn husband's reconciliation with their somewhat-touchy daughter. If the short glimpse she'd gotten of Sasuke protecting Sarada from a falling piece of debris, shortly before her passing, had been anything to go off of, then that reconciliation may already be a ways into the working.

There were worse ways to die. She'd died with a smile on her face, an indulgence few were able to snag in the Elemental Nations' past, but one which appeared to be getting more widely affordable, in the progressive future paved by the Seventh Hokage. Closure and contentment: there were worse ways to live.

 **.**

 **Sakura!Perona Part 1:**

 **mirror**


	9. P2: ɹoɹɹıɯ

**-P-**

 **.**

Sakura peered closer at her reflection, examining herself first with a professional view, then a personal one, discarding her first, still-a-little-disturbing impression. The eyes. . . weren't too bad. They were odd, maybe, but could be handy for an advantage in unnerving opponents with a stare, and besides, 'odd' just made them unique. And, from what she'd seen from this world so far, 'unique' was just as prevalent of a trend in looks as it had been in the Elemental Nations.

Point in case: the absolutely undeniable uniqueness of her. . . foster father (?)'s appearance. Gekko Moriah had just shown up by her closing orphanage one day, just around the time she'd been stubbornly and steadily grabbing together coherency. He'd offered to take her in as a ward of his crew, for his own unexplained reasons, or possibly because he'd been impressed by her reflexive reaction of stomping on his foot and running away. Toweringly tall at at least ten times her babyish height, with literal devil horns, Kiri-nin-esque teeth, and downright ghastly natural coloring, he would've made for a fearsome sight to a normal child. She wasn't a normal child; nevertheless, she, too, admitted to an instinctive wariness at first. But without any solid alternate plans, or any solid evidence against her residing with him, Sakura had agreed, with the intention to reserve judgement of loyalty until later.

So far, she supposed he seemed like he could be an okay foster father to stay with. He wasn't much for actually being fatherly, but his crew all adored him, and it was obvious he cared deeply for them as well. As she was included as an ambiguously defined ward of the crew, she found her raising being a sort of general, united effort. Whoever had free time to spare at the moment would maybe teach her a useful trick or lesson, then send her off to train or learn more from another. Nobody really minded her presence, and it was just as easy to squirrel away for solitude as it was to approach someone for company. Their's was a laid-back ship lead by a laid-back captain.

It was. . . nice, even if a lot of them liked to treat her like the child she looked to be, and push sweets or 'cute' things onto her. Sakura usually accepted those, figuring it was a fair enough compromise between her mature mindset and her placation of the members' wish to have somebody around to spoil.

Looking back at her, it wasn't hard to see why. Taking in the entire picture, Sakura was, all in all, decidedly a 'cute' child - so maybe it was only to be expected that others would assume 'cute' things were for her.

She was young, and therefore small, with a certain roundness of face, wideness of eyes, and thinness of limbs that brought up dolls in one's perception. A comically large crown - a cheap plastic gift to accompany her joking title of 'the ship's little princess' - perched on top of her short pink hair, with her long bangs parted to show her forehead, and the bottom edges of her bob wavering off into hints of natural curls. Her tiny hands folded to a rest on the handle of a closed parasol - the first mate was giving her weekly pointers on how to use it as an unexpected weapon. She'd made her preferences clear early on in her stay for pants instead of dresses in daily wear, as well as her preference for red, and thus her usual outfit was a red shirt with a wave pattern and dots that she'd picked up in some port, over simple black knee-length shorts that weighed a little baggily against her stick-like legs. The red boots she wore had been one of her favorite presents, for it's practicality.

One of her. . . more _exotic_ presents was the bear next to her that had flopped down and laid there, docile and silent, for the last half-hour of her mirror-time ponderings. Kumae was very strangely obedient and quiet for a wild animal, following her around _everywhere_ without much non-breathing sound. To be honest, it made her have some doubts if it wasn't really just an extremely realistic machine, instead of an actual living creature, but the presumed truth still begged the question of _why would you give a literal bear to a three-year-old toddler._ Like. _Why_. It was glaringly cute, of course, and she confessed to a soft sort of fondness for it even while thinking as an adult, but.

Just.

Sometimes she had doubts about the Moriah pirates' collective sanity.

Sane or not, though, they were. . . not family, not yet, but maybe a possibility for one. And hey, new life, new horizons, new people to meet: it just so happened that she was in the market for a new place to call 'home,' as well. Duty to her village was something that technically never ended, but she figured that 'death' and 'another world' were a pretty good defense for freeing up that sense of loyalty a little. She was curious, too, about all the medical impossibilities that were very much possible and existing in this world. For lack of a nindo, perhaps that could be her 'dream'? _To see everything this planet has to offer, and find no end to marvels._

Whimsical, maybe, but she was young again, in body if not in spirit. A pinch of giddiness was acceptable - it wasn't like anybody would reprimand her for _that_.

So. It was decided, now, after a few months on-board for a 'trial' period observing and opining. No more dithering; time to be dedicated. Sakura smiled carefully, experimentally, feeling the skin of her new face stretch accomodatingly for the curve of pearly edges. "Let's go explore Paradise, Kumae," she whispered, one hand pressed to the glass before her. Kumae whuffled in vague, sleepy agreement, and Sakura laughed, a strange, unfamiliar 'horo-horo-horo' sound that burbled out of her throat and spilled over her tongue.

It was a sound she thought she could get used to hearing - and making.

 **.**

 **Sakura!Perona Part 2:**

 **ɹoɹɹıɯ**


	10. H1: academy

**-H-**

 **.**

"Wow~! Hina-chan got top marks again, huh?"

"As expected of the Number One cadet; nothing less than the best in class - no, best in year!"

"Mm, there's a reason all the teachers call Hina-san a shining example of a student, I suppose."

Another Marine cadet scampered down the hall to join the flock of white and blue uniforms. They were rustling impatiently in front of the scoreboard, each and every Marine hopeful eager to glimpse their own results for the midterm assessment.

Sakura, standing a little off to the side, smiled to herself as she felt the praise given so freely, even if under a different name than the one she'd become firmly accustomed to primarily identifying by.

She took her small pleasures where she could, and it was admittedly ego-stroking to be the top of her grade once more. She'd always excelled academically; here, with the benefit of already being motivated to improve herself physically, she was easily the equivalent of Top Kunoichi - or, well, Top Student in general.

The ease didn't make this second life's Academy feel boring, though. There was a whole new world to scour the base's library for information on, a whole new system to adapt to, a whole new body to train and train and train some more (because there was no such thing _ever_ as being too prepared, especially after being used to Team Seven's unique brand of misfortune).

(And, of course. . .)

The latecomer cadet approached her nervously, slightly intimidated. She smiled reassuringly at him, tucking a familiar pink strand of chin-length hair behind one ear, but only seemed to shake him more. Ah, well, there was no helping some people. (And maybe, just maybe, it was almost fun to be so casually respected. Certainly a nice change from her previous childhood. Though, hey! Perfectly-proportioned forehead, right here.)

"Smoker-san is in trouble again! With Jerichi-sensei in the northwest hallway! You, ah, you told us to tell you when it happened. . . ?" he trailed off, voice climbing progressively higher and squeakier.

Sakura smiled and thanked him, then turned on her shined uniform boot-heels and strode off to the northwest hallway.

(. . . a whole new person to bail out.)

.

She was here again.

"Jerichi-sensei, is there something the matter with Smoker-san? I'm sure it must all be a simple misunderstanding."

Here with her short pink hair and oozing sweetness to the nearest adult in charge.

"Hmph! Well, Hina-san, you see, troublemakers like _him_ cannot, of course, be allowed to interrupt important class-time by talking back to the lecturer, especially when-" the disgruntled teacher immediately began justifying himself, his tone softening a little despite himself at the attentive smile-and-nodding afforded by his audience, one in good standing with most of the instructors on base.

It was all hollow layers of bluster and ego, though, spoken for his own peace of mind. Smoker knew exactly who was in the wrong here, and it wasn't himself. The teacher had been openly discriminating against the civilian recruits in class in favor of the ones with Marine ancestry - especially so against the civilian kid rumored to be of pirate blood. He'd thought it was stupid (and that the kid, even if he actually did have pirate blood, was too wimpy to show it), stated such when he couldn't take it any longer, and been promptly sentenced to a chewing-out after class that day in the closest thing there was to a detention. The teacher had looked to be gearing up for a demerit or some extra chores, as well, before the ace cadet of the year had swooped in.

Swooped in, and currently smoothing out the guy's ruffled feathers with a bright smile, earnest eyes, and words so full of charm that no stranger to Hina could detect the blatant pandering sprinkled in there.

Everyone was a stranger to Hina, though, whether they realized it or not. Smoker seemed to be the only one to have the dubious pleasure of witnessing her 'true self,' beyond the star student and model citizen line of bullshit that she fed the world.

Case in point: when the footsteps of the no-longer-disgruntled teacher faded entirely into the distance, the pinkette reached forward and closed the door before letting her smile curve a little nastier into a smug half-smirk half-frown. "What an awful excuse for a human being," she commented as she turned to look at him, in a light, casual tone that was, like usual, at odds with the disgust expressed. "Teachers should never be prejudiced against their students. Particularly for something they can't control, like blood or ability."

". . . Two-faced woman," he couldn't resist muttering under his breath.

" _Eh?_ What was that again, Smoker-san?"

Smoker eyed the smiling pinkette, justifiably wary of her warm tone, but didn't edge away. Here, he could either repeat what was said - _and get punched for insulting her_ \- feign ignorance - _and get struck for insulting her hearing capability_ \- lie - _and get thumped for unsubtle technique_ \- or stay silent - _and get smacked for ignoring her question_. He could already feel the phantom pains, from past experience with her cheerful 'punishments,' beginning to ache in sympathetic expectation.

A not-too-obvious and truthful diversion it was, then.

"Want a spar?"

She looked amused, which meant he probably hadn't been subtle enough, but didn't hit him.

"Sure, if you're offering to get beat."

"Not likely," he scoffed, but already saw the flaw in asking for a fight to avoid a single reprimand.

Well, whatever. At least in a fight he could expect it coming, and fight back for practice.

They turned the opposite way the teacher had left, Hina leading to the outdoor training grounds.

.

"Smoking again, you troublemaker idiot?" she asked, pleasant playfulness layered thinly over an undertone of threatening menace. (It was, perhaps, a bit too entertaining than it should be to imitate Kakashi's typical carefree cheer. By this point, she was pretty sure it'd become typical for her as well. What could she say? It was enjoyable, especially when stirred with a generous dollop of her own temper, which had never been gracious.) "What have I told you about that habit? _Especially when you're still injured._ Just because your name is _Smoker_. . ."

Sakura trailed off with an exaggerated shoulder shrug and sigh of exasperation.

Said 'troublemaker idiot' just grunted in reply. He did, however, jerk his cigar out of the way when she moved to swat it, a reflex born of practiced ease with going through the same routine every time he was spotted with one. They locked eyes, him glaring and her staring. He broke first, grumbling wordlessly, but obediently stubbing out the end. A handy miniature ash tray was set on the table of what was, by this point, basically his personally appointed infirmary bed. (She could find a scrap of sympathy within her at his seeing preference for landing in the infirmary beds rather than the assigned cadet cots, at least; the beds were, unfairly but understandably, a magnitude comfier than the thin, stiff mattresses of the cots.)

All part of the same routine.

One of these days, she vowed in grim amusement, she was going to succeed in training him to automatically stub out his cigars at the sight of her pointed look. He'd already learned to avoid her bats at the cigar itself. After the pointed look, it was just a matter of subconsciously ingraining a habit of stopping at her appearance, then her name, then when anything reminding him of her was brought up, then entirely.

Sakura had too much self-control to physically indulge in gleeful cackles. She did allow herself a mental equivalent of it, however. Ino's explanations on T & I's operant conditioning psychology had lead to many a hospital-fearing ninja's dismay. Her blond best friend would, she was certain, be proud of her putting it to good use in an entirely different world as well.

Outwardly, she simply nodded in satisfaction, walking over to claim the empty visitor's chair. "Good to see _some_ of my lessons have sunk into that head of yours. I was beginning to think it was too thick for anything to get through."

It was lucky that today was a day off for the cadets. She'd originally intended to spend it sleeping in, meticulously going through several books on history and culture to practice looking 'underneath the underneath' (and to snicker to herself at how their propaganda measured up against the Elemental Nations'), cross-questioning the medical staff on base for new knowledge, and maybe beating up a couple training dummies to keep refining her muscle memory. As it so happened, the moment she'd heard word of 'that troublemaker' getting into yet another fight that'd landed him in the infirmary with a reprimand, she'd sighed and scurried over with her stack of prepared textbooks.

They were friends, though neither had verbally made mention of it yet. It was, in fact, entirely possible that Smoker didn't actually think of them as friends. But Sakura had already decided she was going to befriend the hell out of him - with the determination of Naruto's befriending efforts if that was what it took - and she was, therefore, going to be a good friend and stay here with him as he recovered.

"Well?" she prompted, shifting the tray aside to make room for her water bottle and books. He glanced at the stack, definitely aware they meant she was settling in for a long run, but didn't comment.

"Well, what?" he answered dully, a strain of weariness not covered up neatly enough to escape her perception. His gaze had returned to the pristine white ceiling - the position it'd been in when she'd first entered.

"Well, what was the fight about this time?" she said, perhaps a little more snappishly than strictly warranted. Could you blame her, though? Uncommunicative maybe-friends lying injured in a hospital bed kinda brought a pang of stressful memories to mind, even if the situations were entirely, entirely different. She shuffled and reorganized her books a bit, eyes focused on the spines.

". . . The usual." It was more reluctant than dull. Improvement?

"People in positions of power picking on the ones they're supposed to protect?" she said, half-sarcastically and half-not.

It wasn't dignified with an answer.

"Upperclassman - or men - picking on younger cadet - or cadets?" she tried again, more genuine.

"Seaman Apprentices telling a chore boy he was never going to amount to anything in life," he finally replied.

Sakura sighed.

"I'd have punched them too, then, but you could've at least been smarter about picking the fight," she scolded, advising helpfully, "Find a place _without_ witnesses next time. . . or make sure to _get_ a few witnesses to agree you were in the right. Or for back-up, not that I think you'd actually let somebody help in your fight."

Smoker grunted.

". . . do what you will," she sighed again, plucking up the first book to break open as she leaned back into the chair. "But get some rest. Tomorrow's morning drills and I don't think you'll be exempted."

She watched over the top of the pages as he allowed his eyelids to slide shut and slump. Then it was quiet, as he slept and she read to the beat of his shallow, steady breaths.

(This world's propaganda put up a decent showing, but her totally unbiased opinion declared Konoha to remain the best at subtle persuasion.)

.

"Summer break? Yeah, what about it?"

 _Tap._

Hina sighed - a familiar sound around him. This sigh was probably about his lack of social skills that she so often bemoaned, rather than his lack of respect for authority, or his inability to understand when and where to swallow bullshit in silence, or. . .

The list of Hina sighs that he'd memorized and learned to identify over the years was rather long. He chose not to think too hard on the reasons for its length.

 _Tap._

She shifted a little from where she was currently lying down next to him, stomach-up, enjoying the warm sunshine with one lithely muscled arm slung over to shade to her closed eyes. When satisfied with her new positioning, she spoke again. "Summer break is short for cadets, but we do get an entire month off of training starting today. Are you just going to stay in base and train the entire time?"

 _Tap._

Smoker didn't exactly want to reply - he didn't consider himself a very talkative person - but Hina, besides being probably the most tolerable cadet to be around, usually hounded him until he did so. By now, it was almost habit to maintain an absent-minded conversation with her when she brought one up, though he still wasn't anywhere near chatterbox verbosity - something he was perfectly satisfied with, thank you. It helped that she wasn't deterred by stoicism, and indeed, seemed to talk all the more brightly to make up for it.

"That's what _you're_ planning to do, isn't it?" he pointed out.

 _Tap._

"I'll also be relaxing with books," she defended halfheartedly. If Hina wanted to truly convince a person, he'd seen firsthand how she went about doing it. This was just. . . banter.

"And that's your hobby - looking through medical texts you beg off the infirmary staff and memorizing that 'Bingo Book' of yours. I have a hobby that I plan on doing during break, too, so we're even."

 _Tap._

Hina cracked an eye half-open, catching on the slow, steady movement of his hands.

"Rock balancing?" she asked, rhetorical with rim of sarcasm.

"'Bingo Book'?" he shot back, referring to the strange name she'd bestowed upon that handmade 'book' of stapled-together bounty posters, which she updated constantly, and tended to flip through on occasion when bored, and out of fresh alternative literary material.

 _Tap._

"As expected, a boring guy like Smoker-kun has such such a fittingly boring hobby," she sighed, but didn't argue the point further. Too lazy from the lull of sea breeze, birdsong, and cloudless blue skies, likely. He categorized it as one of her fond and amused sighs, indicating she didn't really mean what she said.

Smoker replied accordingly.

By not replying at all, and instead carefully placing another rock on top of his precariously balanced pile of rocks.

 _Tap._

He smiled, just a little - an upward, momentary twitch of his lips. It appeared he just might be able to set a new personal record today. Unbeknownst to him, Hina's half-open eye caught the expression on his face, and mimicked it with a tiny twitch of her own. She closed that eye.

The two of them passed a peaceful afternoon in the summertime weather, Smoker content with his rocks, and Hina drowsily enjoying a nap.

Her faint, fragmented murmurs of leaves and training ground trees were dismissed as either observations or ramblings of a dream.

It looked to be a nice dream, at least, since she briefly seemed regretful upon being woken for dinner. With a blink, though, the regret was wiped from her face, and Hina jumped up to stretch out the stiffness from staying in place for hours. Smoker joined her in the stretches, and they walked to the mess hall together, rocks forgotten and an indent in the grass left behind.

.

Sakura handed Smoker one of the delightful impossibilities of science that existed everywhere in this strange, fun new world.

"This is," she told him gravely, the ends of her bobcut - newly trimmed to frame her face sharper, in celebration of promotion from cadet - brushing against the edges of her jaw, "your graduation gift. Guard it with the your cigars' lives."

The person she'd originally thought of and gravitated to as a mix between Sasuke's gruff personality and Naruto's determined philosophy, but now only thought of and gravitated to as _her friend_ , gave her an unimpressed look.

One free of a cigar jutting out from his lips, thankfully. Not that she hadn't noticed the quick hand motion that'd occurred as she'd come into his line of vision, or the lingering scent of tobacco left in the air. Still. Small steps. And it was graduation day; she could forgive his sloppier than usual cover-up. Everybody seemed a bit off their game today, distracted by the prospect of setting off to sea being realized before their very own eyes.

"This is," he responded in deadpan, lifting with both palms the docile defiance of biology, "a Regular Den Den Mushi. Probably from your weird collection of them, God knows you have enough to spare."

The green-white snail with a gray shell, somehow managing to project a simultaneously surly and long-suffering attitude, blinked. The movement didn't stir the bright red ribbon tied around it's neck in an almost offensively perky rabbit-ear bow.

Sakura smiled, faux graveness gone entirely. She straightened the collar of her new petty officer jacket as she spoke, glancing at the indifferently rumpled uniform across from her. "First off, my collection is not weird. Telepathic snails with these many varieties and species and this level of of mimicry just _don't make sense_ and I _will_ dissect and study them until they _do_. Secondly, they're cute. And remind me of slugs. Which are even cuter, obviously. Third and last, Marines usually don't get assigned Den Den Mushi until they make captain or higher. With a personal one right off the bat, you have no reason not to stay in contact when we're on different ships. Besides, this one fit you so perfectly that I just _had_ to give it away before I dissected it as well."

Smoker looked at the- at _his_ Den Den Mushi. His Den Den Mushi looked back.

"No returns," she added, crossing her arms.

". . ."

"And you didn't even get me a graduation present as well," she lamented in exaggerated sorrow. "What an awful friend, to contemplate refusing a gift like this when-"

"-Alright, Hina, I understand," he interrupted with a not-quite eye-roll, lowering his arms and tucking the medical abomination under his arm. They exchanged slight (very slight, on Smoker's end) smiles. Sakura basked in the feeling of comradeship for a moment, the tug of nostalgia lessened to almost nothing after more than a decade and a half of separation from her previous life. This was a new life, a new world, a place and time to make new connections and go on new adventures.

Her new Academy days were over.

Her new Marine days were just starting.

(They parted ways at the dock before the friendly silence could turn awkward; neither said goodbye. Sakura promised to make Captain before he could, and Smoker cracked a scoffing smirk in rebuttal, dodging the first playful punch to be clipped by the second.)

 **.**

 **Sakura!Hina Part 1:**

 **Academy**

 **.**

 _Bonus:_

 _Purupurupurupuru. . . purupurupurupuru. . ._

 _"I saw your photo in the newspaper today. Put on a shirt before you get a cold. Or is it that old adage of idiots being unable to get colds?" Brisk._

 _"I'm smoke. Shirts are annoyingly restrictive and it's warm enough in East Blue to not need one." Deadpan._

 _"Well, hello smoke, I'm unimpressed. Put on a fucking shirt before I punch you." Disinterested._

 _"Seastone jitte." Factual._

 _"Seastone knuckledusters." Dry._

 _"You're in West Blue." Reasonable._

 _"Won't stop me from punching you the next time we meet. And it would be a shame to traumatize that adorable subordinate of yours because of your refusal to wear a goddamn shirt. Men_ _." Exasperated._

 _"Woman." Automatic._

 _". . . was that a joke?" Wondering._

 _"No-" Denying._

 _"-Hah, I should mark this day down as the day Smoker-kun made a joke." Amused._

 _"Why do I feel like your -kun sounds insulting?" Flat._

 _"Because it is. Now, shirts are a thing that exist and should be worn. Wear. One. You didn't mind wearing the Marine uniform in our cadet days." Curious._

 _"That was mandatory." Explanatory._

 _"As if you actually cared, with how many times I bailed you out of trouble." Disbelieving._

 _". . ." Uneasy._

 _". . .?" Confused._

 _". . ." Decided._

 _". . . hello?" Impatient._

 _". . . thanks. For always bailing me out." Gruff._

 _"Oh." Surprised._

 _". . . Well?" Demanding._

 _"Well, I mean, yeah, you're welcome, I suppose." Bewildered._

 _". . ." Disappointed._

 _"Wait, holy shit, are you embarrassed-" Gleeful._

 _Smoker hung up._

 _He'd probably pay for that the next time they crossed paths and Hina demanded a spar but right now he could quite find it within himself to care overly much._

 _His Den Den Mushi gave him a sardonic look he recognized from being on his own face more than a few times before._

 _"Shut up," he told it._

 _It, quite obviously, didn't answer, but only looked increasingly sardonic._


	11. C4: errand

**-C-**

 **.**

Sakura was in a good mood. Satisfied, certainly. Pleased, even.

'The Dog with a Bone' - which was the crew's generally acknowledged insider nickname for Garp's otherwise unnamed ship, and also generally acknowledged to be a very accurate description of The Fist himself - had made an uncharacteristic detour to the gentler East Blue waters for a few errands. Though originally a covert dissident of this course of action - but too dutiful to actually protest any of Headquarters' orders without further reasoning than a rather childish 'it'll be too easy', even if it was pretty obvious that the 'orders' were just busywork to distract Garp after his bout of property destruction at Marineford - Sakura had rather quickly changed her opinion on the East Blue campaign a few days into it.

True, matching up Garp against _any_ East Blue criminal was nothing more than a joke waiting to happen. But that just meant he was much more inclined to take a nap, or sunbathe on deck with a plateful of snacks, than to bother rousing himself for a pathetically unfair (and, more importantly to him, unchallenging and therefore totally un- _fun_ ) curbstomp. And as a direct result, he was also much more inclined to agree to her leading attacks on pirate crews, and taking on the captains more or less solo, when previously he would've obliviously hogged the strongest targets for himself and bulldozed all the other unfortunates aside for them to pick off and clean up.

Here, though, even the captains - typically the strongest targets - were too weak for him to think worth the effort, when he could pawn the entire operation off onto an apprentice in sore need of some more battle experience to catch up to training experience... like, say, her.

(Admittedly, he sometimes got too worked up by watching to resist pitching in with a few sideline-thrown cannonballs of his own. But the vice admiral was otherwise pretty good with respecting that others needed to test their own strength without interference.)

So, yeah, Sakura was in a fairly better than average mood. (Not that she thought her average mood wasn't decently good in and of itself.)

Sure, the offerings being little more than cannon fodder for the Dog's crew, like she'd privately expected. Even with her proposing that they comb the seas a little more carefully instead of going straight to Shells Town for their errands, they hadn't encountered anyone she had excuse to try her Haki against... not even Buggy the Clown, who had apparently been defeated by some pirates the Orange Town citizens couldn't name, and left seeking revenge on them. But there was still the shining reassurance that their time had been usefully spent making East Blue civilian life a lot more peaceful for at least a little while, and it was extremely helpful to have a measure for her current skill beyond the heavily skewed perceptions of Garp, who was her main sparring partner nowadays. Restraint was hard to learn when fighting against a person who likely didn't know the meaning of it, after all.

"Pirate flag sighted!" came the call from the crows nest.

She grunted as she crashed another blow against Garp's Armament'ed block, bouncing off and skidding back onto the balls of her feet as she felt the rebound hit her.

"Permission to lay the beat-down on some no-good pirate scum, Vice Admiral?" she joked cheekily, rolling her shoulders as she purposely borrowed some of her mentor's favorite phrases.

Garp tossed back his head and laughed, already headed for the empty half-shaded sunchair. "Bwahaha! Permission granted, Lieutenant Junior Grade!"

"Still an ensign, sir!" Sakura reminded him, smiling from the infectious high spirits that pervaded the entire ship after a few days of relaxing in the relatively sunny and smooth East Blue waters. This seemed to most of the crew to be a paid vacation, compared to the usual hijinks and challenges that Garp got into in the far more 'interesting' Grand Line. The largest problem aboard these days was figuring out how to supply enough donuts for Garp's attempts to break a world record - he maxed out at 842 in one go, and the kitchen staff lived in constant terror of him gearing up for another try. There'd been a secret ban placed on donuts until when, in order to enable the grimly determined cooks to build up a frozen stockpile, and the entire crew was in on the plan to divert Garp's attention away from donuts until then. "Promotion's still pending!"

She slid off her knuckledusters to crack her knuckles for a moment before replacing them, then wiggled her toes under her boots, and jumped down from the railing to join the small boarding party in their rowboat - adorned, of course, with a mural of a dog growling over a bone.

They pushed off.

.

"Ah, I remember getting my own feet wet with small fry like these, back in the day..." Garp mused merrily with misty-eyed nostalgia. He crunched on a handful of rice crackers, as he reclined on a sunchair specially built to support his bulk, the not-so-distant clashes and screams of battle serving as music to his ears.

"Hit 'im harder, he's getting up again!" he unhelpfully added, hollering his idea of advice with his hands cupped around his mouth. "That's it! No, the other one! Bwahahahaha! This is making me hungry just looking at them!" He cheerfully went for another handful of rice crackers from the platter at his side.

Bogard stared at the back of his head, dead-eyed. Back in the day? Getting his feet wet? Small fry?

 _It was more like you terrorized everyone you could run, swim, or sail within cannonball's reach of until HQ gave up and promoted you out of East Blue..._

.

 **.**

 **Sakura!Coby Part 4:**

 **Errand**


	12. C5: impelled

**To clarify:** _ **Bonuses**_ **are extra scenes/lines/routes not included due to story flow, that can be considered story!canon-compatible, and are usually comedy/fluff.** _ **Deletes**_ **are extra scenes/lines/routes not included due to story flow, that were considered but ultimately rejected for story!canon-compatibility, and are usually not comedy/fluff. Any** _ **Bonuses/Deletes**_ **are compatibility-optional extras, in that it is up to you if you consider them off-screen happenings or alternate-universe happenings.**

 **.**

 **-C-**

 **.**

"Approaching Impel Down!" a white-garbed lookout hollered down to deck, from his perch atop the doghouse-shaped crow's nest.

Secretly excited beneath her calm composure, Sakura leaned against the railings of the dog-themed ship as she watched the stone building loom closer with interest.

In her time serving with Garp so far, it hadn't been especially rare for them to travel through the Gates of Justice. Lots of Marines bunked at Marineford between excursion, and as a vice admiral, Garp had his own obligatory meetings that even he couldn't skip out on. And they'd stopped by Enies Lobby every so often to drop off a high-risk 'catch' for sentencing. Well, before it had been destroyed via Buster Call and the chain of events leading up to that, any way.

(When hearing of his grandson's involvement in the entire debacle, labeled as one of the greatest historical shames for the Marines as a whole, Garp had burst into uproarious laughter that seemed to be mostly shameless pride. Sakura hadn't been sure why, exactly, she'd expected any different, and tried not to make her dead-eyed stare of disbelief too obvious.)

It was her first experience making a personal stop and stepping actual foot into the infamous prison itself, though. The Elemental Nations' closest equivalent to such a place was Kusagakure's Hōzuki Castle, where there were inmates from more than just one land, or village (considering the vast majority of the prisoner population were ninja). Still, there had pretty much been an unspoken rule that none of the _really_ important or high-profile prisoners actually went there. None of the hidden villages trusted the theoretically neutral space _that_ much, and when missing-nin or traitors weren't killed on the spot, they were squirreled away inside village grounds, to live under lock and key (or, rather, seals, T &I grilling, and ANBU observation) for the rest of their statistically-likely short and miserable existence.

So the concept of a place like Impel Down - regarded with such widespread fear of its contents and equal trust of its safety - was intriguing. Her days at the Marine academy, studying nonstop in an attempt to absorb and assimilate with as much of her new surroundings as possible, meant she knew very well how impressive the defenses were in theory. An unshakable skepticism from her previous life just meant she was especially eager to learn how the defenses matched up in practice.

Garp's arrival on deck was easy to hear and predict, just like every other one of his movements outside of battle. He bounded enthusiastically up to the figurehead - a dog's head clenching a bone, either modeled after or the model for his favored dog mask (she'd never asked, too dumbfounded by the apparently nonsensical purpose of the mask itself to ever bother opening up discussion about _that_ particular whimsy of his) - and surveyed the foggy, overcast horizon, good spirits undeterred by the choppy waters, ominous armaments, and generally unfriendly visage before him.

"Well!" he announced, to no one in particular. It was possible he was addressing Bogard, standing soundlessly by his side as usual, but if so, he neither turned his head nor waited for a response that would likely never come from the reserved right-hand man. Her mentor squinted, which may or may not have been purely for dramatics, as Sakura was fairly sure the man's eyesight was in better condition than any person in their late 70's the right to be in.

"Time to see that chief warden's ugly mug again!" Garp declared with a grimly determined sort of cheerfulness, oxymoronical as that descriptor was. Garp was sometimes the _embodiment_ of an oxymoron, not unlike Tsunade, or every other ridiculously powerful and stubborn person she'd ever had the... experience of meeting. (Sakura, with much mental dignity, did not think overly hard on whether she herself - either as Haruno Sakura or Floran Coby - deserved a spot on that list.)

"And that ungrateful brat family of mine, too!"

He didn't finish this pronouncement off with a bellowing laugh like he usually did to other pronouncements. He didn't seem very inclined to laugh at all right now, actually, despite his seemingly genuine expression of exuberance.

They docked, and disembarked.

Sakura fell in line slightly behind Bogard, flanking Garp like a dutiful apprentice.

Garp stopped short of the entrance and shook his head.

"No," he decided, bulky arms crossing with authority. "Go back."

Bogard didn't react. He was likely used to interpreting The Hero's words by now. With a placid nod, he began walking back to the Dog.

A little more hesitant, Sakura took longer to move. "Sir?"

It seemed… kind of an anticlimax? (She was missing her tour!) What did he mean, 'go back'? Clearly he wasn't making any sign of turning back himself, so that meant he intended to…

"Go back to the ship, Coby," Garp reiterated heavily, exuberance fading by inches. He was staring straight ahead at the gates, with an unfamiliar look in his eyes. "This is something I'm doing alone. … I'm owed some privacy for this. This is between me and my grandson."

So he was going to keep that claim until the end?

She didn't expect anything else from him, not really.

She understood.

"I understand," Sakura agreed quietly, beginning to withdraw. Maybe this was overstepping her boundaries, but…

"… I hope you say everything you need to, sir."

She understood many things, and 'regrets' were certainly one of them.

Garp, in that moment, bore a stronger resemblance to Tsunade in her mind than ever.

The Dog's crew watched silently from the deck as their captain went where they _could_ \- but wouldn't, out of respect - follow, keeping vigil.

.

.

.

The announcement of Gol D. Roger's secret son's capture had been discreetly filtering through the ranks for a while now. Although _Garp_ was to _discreet_ as _atheists_ were to _devout -_ not to mention how he mostly pushed off administrative duties like answering calls onto _her,_ with Bogard being too taciturn of a conversationalist - Sakura had caught word along the Marine grapevine (or, well, snailvine, considering the Den Den Mushi). She didn't hear a specific name, but thought it of at least enough importance to pass it along to her mentor in an idle, offhand mention.

That was the first time she saw Garp falter in a fight. Their practice spar (a.k.a. supposedly 'instructional' thrashing to 'know your limits, boy!') was canceled that day, when Garp thundered down to his office. (Which was a rare occurrence all by itself, as it meant being confronted by the sight of ever-worsening stacks of uncompleted paperwork, which Bogard steadfastly refused to do for him, and which Sakura had eventually learned to wriggle out of as well.)

Sakura had quietly followed on much lighter feet, curiosity glassing over a bubble of concern and apprehension. Standing at the entrance below-deck, a little ways off from the unclosed door of the captain's office, she could glimpse (and quite easily overhear) him punching in Den Den Mushi numbers to demand answers from colleagues. (She winced a little, and it was only partly in sympathy for the long-suffering flinches of the ship's Den Den Mushi.)

His shouts - hardened with true rage, another rare thing for the normally lighthearted if temperamental man - had echoed dimly all the way above-deck, where most of the crew had retreated to worry together (and to try and preserve what was left of their eardrums after serving with Garp for so long already.)

She stepped forward, closed the door, and went upstairs. Bogard noticed her return immediately and nodded at her, signature kiseru pipe bobbing in motion from the corner of his mouth to follow. Sakura dipped her head in a shallow bow of reply, and they stood together in silence for a while, backs to the ocean spray and keeping mutual watch on the staircase opening closest to the office.

Garp didn't come up for dinner, or the rest of the night. The yelling died off into thumps of thrown objects, then silence.

Bogard and Sakura shared a look of pursed lips and slightly furrowed brows over the uncharacteristically glum mess hall. He shrugged, she sighed, and they both grimaced, each other's unease only reflected back at the other.

The extra-large dish of donuts, set at the head of the table in front of the largest chair, lay perfectly undisturbed the entire meal, despite the dozens of eyes flickering vigilantly over to it every few seconds.

.

Still, somehow, all that noise and openly expressed turmoil had been infinitely preferable to the glimmer of conflicted emotion - identifiable, after careful searching, to be the first glimpse of despair Sakura ever recalled Garp displaying - in his raised eyes the next morning, when Sakura softly entered his office with a tray of rice crackers, hot tea, and leftover donuts to wake him for breakfast.

Even his crunching and chewing sounded more subdued than usual, and the slightly lost skew of his frustrated expression just looked _wrong_ on Garp the Hero, Garp the legend. . . Garp, her mentor.

When she exited, she glanced left at Bogard, leaning against the wall with his eyes shadowed by his hat as usual, silently smoking. He straightened, tipped his hat back, and took her recently vacated place as office-visitor.

Bogard knew Garp much better and for longer. Sakura hoped he'd be of help.

(Garp was all _wrong_.)

 _"... Bogard,_ it's _Ace._ He's _fami-_ "

The door closed, and she left to ambush one of her fellow crew members for a gentle interrogation of Fire Fist's history, having never paid much attention to the rising star whose path had never crossed with theirs, nor having gleaned much from Garp's frequent but often vague and half-coherent ramblings about his grandsons.

.

Luckily, the vice admiral's boisterousness was the type that recovered quickly in bouncing back from shocks.

It wasn't even a full 24 hours between him first hearing of the- of Ace's capture, and him striding confidently over to the navigation room to demand they start setting course for Impel Down.

"I wasn't aware we had business there, Captain?" one of the more daring navigators ventured forth.

Garp grinned, bushy eyebrows suddenly seeming more menacing.

"We don't. _I_ do."

Calmly, the older navigator reached over and smacked the inquirer without looking. "Apologies, Captain. This one hasn't learned when orders are orders and when orders are _captain's orders_. Impel Down, soon as we can make it, sir."

.

.

.

.

Nobody other than Garp and Fire Fist know what was said there, because, well, nobody else _was_ there, but Garp come back on deck a couple of hours later with a _thump_ and a boisterous announcement to set course for Marineford next.

"Oh, yeah, send all the proper notices and all, we're doing this _right_ so there's no excuses. And somebody get me more donuts, fast!"

He topped off his carefree words with a gut-bursting laugh.

Sakura and Bogard share a small smile of relief, or at least, a lessening of lines around their mouths.

They joined in the crew's chorus of, "Good to have you back, Captain!"

 **.**

 **Sakura!Coby Part 5:**

 **Impelled**

 _Deletes:_

 _The slumped but scowling man, held up only by the wall's chains, doesn't seem intent on acknowledging her presence. At least, not beyond a glare that's giving its best effort at burning a hole through her pristine 'justice' jacket._

 _That's fine. She can wait. Sakura's not exactly sure herself what she'd been searching for when she decided to come down here after Garp left. Looking silently at the epicenter of a possible war, though, she doesn't find it._

 _Maybe her staring is starting to get to him, though, because the pirate finally snaps and curses at her sullenly, weak from seastone but no less fiery (pun not intended)._

 _"What the hell do you want, you pink bastard? If you're another fucking Marine with a bone to pick with the convict, like a coward, then say it already! I may have demon's blood, but I'm no son of anyone's except Whitebeard!" he sneers, despite the rasp from what must be a raw throat._

 _Sakura considers her reply, rolling around words in her mind to be sorted through with thoughts. She disregards the nostalgia rising thick in her chest at a beaten-up noirette spitting disgust with fury shining hot. She ignores the exhausted, bitter sort of defiance in his voice. She skips past stark differences between the boy Garp recounted as his grandson, and the second division commander of Whitebeard's infamous fleet. She takes those, and compares them with the Mera Mera no Mi consumer with a hefty bounty in his own right, and the terrible mistake perpetuated by Marine-printed propaganda. Finally, she puts them against the prisoner in front of her now, chained but not contained._

 _Oxymorons._

 _And she locates, in the end, very little to say._

 _"... Nothing," she says. "I want nothing from you. I just thought that it would be right of me to see for myself the person who could've, in another world, been something to me. Your grandfather does loves you very much, you know, even if he doesn't love your choices and is awful at expressing himself. Portgas- Gol D. Ace... I'll be keeping an eye on Luffy."_

 _She walks away, brisk and blank-faced, before she can hear a demand for clarification, or reveal the faint flush of embarrassment at coming all this way for such trite words. Getting an answer wasn't the point, after all, and making a connection wasn't the point, either._

 _Sakura's still not exactly sure what she'd been searching for, coming all the way down here at a time like this. But she thinks that she may have found it anyway... just a bit._

 _._

 _She hasn't made it more than a level up from Fire Fist's cell when she stops and hears the announcement with everybody else._

 _'Attention, all guards active! There has been a break-in...'_

 _Sakura smiles. It's not a happy one, nor a sad one._

 _Neck cracked, shoulders rolled, and flexing reinforced knuckledusters, Marine Vice-Captain Floran Coby marches off on seastone-tipped boots to perform his duty of apprehending the intruders._

 _But if he marches a little slower than he can or should, well._

 _That's nobody's business._

 _And anyway, there's no-one around who notices._


	13. C6: contact

**-C-**

 **.**

"We left Paradise a few days ago for the New World," she easily admitted, her attention split between the paperwork and curiously disfigured snail on the desk she'd commandeered to do it on.

Licking her thumb, she turned the page, and focused on perfectly forging Garp's signature. Usually Bogard did this part, but he was unfortunately sick with one of the Grand Line's many rare variants of infectious diseases, and was currently caged in quarantine by the ship's medical staff. Sakura had already visited for the day when fetching some bandages for a scrape - nothing serious, just a shallow consequence of not coating a landing with Armament Haki fast enough when sparring with Garp - but he had been asleep.

She still planned to visit again before the day was up to commiserate - the no-smoking rule must be grating on his nerves - but somebody had to do the paperwork around here. The Marines was a partial bureaucracy, after all.

And it wasn't like they were going to expect Garp to finish it if everyone ignored the paper stacks and waited long enough. He lived with the cheerful understanding that anything _truly_ urgent would bring itself up to him fairly quickly.

Last she'd knew of, the aged (but somehow still in the prime of his life) Marine was keeping his old friend company on the other side of the closed infirmary observation window, with Bogard proving exactly as talkative as normal (she suspected he was actually still asleep) and several white-clothed medical workers hovering anxiously with ineffective hisses to lower his voice.

Silly staffers.

Garp _had_ no inside voice.

Sakura smiled to herself with private amusement. She wondered how many people would anguish if she gifted Garp a personal speakerphone for his next birthday or vice admiralship promotion anniversary, and claimed that he would setting an inspiring example for hopeful Marines-in-the-making everywhere if he used it _judiciously_ when belting out his usual pirate trash talk.

It would be an excellent test in the effects of Armament Haki on ears.

 _"You_ _just_ _missed them again, then,"_ a feminine voice groaned in defeat on the other side of the Regular Den Den Mushi.

.

/ / Tashigi heard Coby sigh over the snail transmitter - a fond, soft exhale of breath. Physically, the mimic ability of the slightly psychic creatures allowed the currently bandana-wearing and serenely smiling Den Den Mushi to copy Coby's helpless shrug from the other end.

It was… a little odd, seeing something without shoulders try to shrug, but the faithful Den Den gave its best shot with a kind of jiggly wiggle.

" _Well, that's unlucky. The… third time now?"_

"Fourth," Tashigi corrected wryly. "This is the fourth time you've barely missed them."

Den Den -Coby pouted playfully, echoing the pinkette's protest from leagues and leagues away. " _I wouldn't call a few days or a week's worth of difference to be 'barely' missing them."_

It _was_ kind of unlucky, though.

By his own account, Coby was more interested in keeping track of the Straw Hats than meeting up with them, but he admitted that talking would be a very efficient way of gathering information.

Not in so many words, of course. She just knew him well enough to puzzle out the meaning behind his flowery words. Coby looked so kind and spoke so nicely and acted like such a well-mannered young boy that it was difficult for the unfamiliar to divine his rather mercenary and pragmatic nature.

Oh, he _was_ kind and he _was_ nice and most of the time he had shockingly good manners for a self-professed 'tiny village brat'. But he also had a mind like a steel trap, and the sort of ruthlessness that had pinned him to the undefeated position atop the Marine academy rankings, for every year running until graduation.

Tashigi herself was about two or three years Coby's senior. Age meant less in the Marine academy than in most other education systems, since classes were sorted from examination scores.

Most would probably explain it away as preparation for how unevenly distributed promotions up the ranks could be, due to promotions almost always resulting from a combination of talent, skill, drive, and luck rather than the sheer number of years in service.

They'd shared a few classes. When Tashigi figured out this tiny _pink-haired_ kid was a. consistently the best student at almost _everything_ ; b. disliked bullies and had a rather _physical_ way of discouraging them, yet somehow was never caught; c. _didn't_ think the weird clumsy absentminded girl in the corner who wanted a swordsman was any less capable for being a girl (just for being clumsy and absentminded); and d. was willing to at least listen considerately to lectures on swords, they started partnering up for all the exercises and projects.

Oh, and you didn't mention the hair.

Studying with Coby was like getting a free tutor experience. Sparring _against_ Coby was… a humbling one. This was an opinion she wasn't alone in sharing - there was likely some sort of unofficial academy club eventually formed by traumatized Coby combatants.

Admittedly, they were largely those who'd picked on others or picked on his hair. He didn't go too hard against anyone who didn't deserve it.

Tashigi gladly picked herself up after each round and grew stronger for it.

There was a certain sense of smug satisfaction to be had, however, in knowing that she could still beat him in a swordfight every time… as long as he kept to _using_ the sword as a _weapon_ and not just a distraction for one of his sneaky martial arts moves, which he refused to credit a source for.

" _I know where my strengths are at," he'd laughed once after a fight. "I'll leave the swordplay to you, future greatest swordsman."_

She liked how he never differentiated between swordsman and swordswoman. One was the same as the other to him - as long they had the strength to prove it. There was no need to differentiate. Inferiority was a matter of lack of determination to improve, not inherent gender results.

She started introducing herself as a swordsman after that. Some people took her more seriously, and the ones who didn't soon learned that they should.

Coby was accelerated, and graduated a bit ahead of her, but they ended up assigned to the same fresh-from-graduation ship rotations for a while, and worked together as they waited to be re-evaluated for a more permanent placing.

They'd kept in touch even after parting their different ways, when he'd landed a position on a vice admiral's crew to traverse the Grand Line, and she'd been transferred to Smoker - a reliable bastion of Marine authority in the most peaceful sea of them all.

She hadn't been resentful. It wasn't her style. Not when she knew very well that Coby had earned his way up the ladder, fair and square. She was a swordsman, anyway, and Haki-less so far; she wouldn't be learning anything from Garp in the hypothetical ship switch, whereas Coby would benefit far more as an Armament-enhanced close combat specialist.

And she could learn a lot from the jitte-using Smoker, whose brand of justice she kind of admired. Honing her skills in bustling Loguetown, the epicenter of all _notable_ pirate activity, was a respectable duty. The ambitious wanted out of the East - and that gave her plenty of practice in keeping them in.

Besides, it was hard to be really resentful of the prodigy once you saw, firsthand like she did, how much effort he put into _reaching_ that talent. He hit like the most garishly red-pink truck ever, and he practiced and studied every night with dedication to accomplish that.

But prodigies were still… prodigies. They were _different_ at a fundamental level. Coby had always been very polite, very calm, and always, always smiling. Teachers adored him, as did the students who weren't creeped out by how he could keep his temper while punching a crater into the training fields.

It wasn't arrogant to say she was his closest friend in the academy, but even then there was this… distance between them. Not patronizing, more like he was mature beyond his years.

And he was. But… that wasn't exactly what she was getting at…

Anyway, when he asked for a favor Tashigi was surprised enough to ask _why._

Why did someone who'd already been to the New World - someone who was generally known among Marines to be a rising star and a much more restrained Garp 2.0 - care about knowing how a no-name rookie pirate got along?

Straw Hat was had exploded on the scene suddenly and impressively, and he was big for a East Blue starter, but that was all small fry in the vastness of the Grand Line.

That was hardly better than plankton, really.

Coby answered with an earnest explanation of his interest in seeing how such a promising young rookie would turn out - there were so very few East Blue residents who ever made it to the Grand Line, after all. He'd been one of them, and wanted to keep an eye on another.

Tashigi had… not really bought it. She didn't believe Coby was _lying_ , per say, but she was aware that her former classmate wasn't exactly someone who felt any sentimentality towards his birthplace, so there had to be something _more_ to the request for updates.

Still, even without knowing exactly why her friend had taken such an interest, Tashigi had obliged. He was her friend, the oldest one she still kept contact with.

It wasn't any great burden, and their interests _did_ intersect at the Straw Hat crew (she had a _score_ to settle with that swordsman), so she'd slip in a few comments here and there whenever they made time for another Den Den call.

Unlike everybody else she served with, Coby was an attentive listener who never grew tired of hearing her expound ecstatically on swords, swords, swords, and oh, justice.

They'd held long debates on justice before, so it was well-trodden ground, but not one either ever failed to lose interest in. They were Marines, and the die-hard believers.

Justice was kind of their _thing_.

Den Den -Coby spoke up again, shaking her out of her thoughts. He'd tried giving suggestions before on how to stay more focused, but she couldn't help it. It was a part of her.

The meditation techniques were helpful for keeping cool in fights, though.

" _Hey, when were you going to tell me you and Smoker were promoted after Alabasta? I had to learn from the Marineford newletters, and we only get that on the Dog to laugh at whatever ridiculous propaganda the public relations team had to spin off Garp's latest exploits as!"_

.

/ / The Den Den mimicking Tashigi blushed, bashful patches of red flushing from underneath the glasses the abomination of nature had sprouted.

Den Den Mushi would never stop creeping Sakura out just a little, but she had to admit they were startlingly useful. Any similarly instant and detailed mode of communication in the Elemental Nations would've been both wastefully chakra-intensive to the point of near-uselessness, and jealously hoarded nevertheless by various Hidden Villages as a secret technique.

" _W- Well, there never seemed to be a good time to just come right and say it,"_ Den Den -Tashigi muttered modestly, although she was obviously pleased that Sakura had found out anyway, and not too long after the fact, either. " _And you're the only person I've ever met who both calls the Marine publications 'propaganda' openly, while genuinely and sincerely meaning it in a_ _positive_ _sense."_

The pinkette mentally shrugged. Propaganda wasn't inherently negative, that was merely a preconception perpetrated by propaganda itself. Ninja culture was intimately familiar with the usefulness of propaganda all along the spectrum, and as a proud Marine, she did view the Marineford publications to be to her benefit.

Still ridiculous, though. And to anyone with a modicum of sense, it was transparently obvious as well in its bias. But that just meant that whoever was in charge of PR hiring wasn't doing a very good job.

The best propaganda was subtle, after all.

"I call it like I see it. We should celebrate, when we get the chance to meet up again," Sakura decided firmly. It'd been a while since they'd last met in person, although those occurrences happened more often now that Smoker had been stationed in the Grand Line as well. "… I'll buy you a new sword."

" _I- I couldn't possibly accept,"_ the black-haired woman demurred.

"And why not? We both know that's the present you'll like the most. If you're worried about cost, don't be. It's not like I spend my paychecks or bounty bonuses on much other than weapons upkeep, clothes, and sometimes food." Sakura was also not above a bit of shameless guilt-tripping. "Let me give a congratulations-on-the-promotion gift to my best friend who completely earned it."

She was certainly Coby's, anyway.

And Sakura admired her, too; it was never easy to be a woman in a predominantly masculine occupation. While the bias of shinobi over kunoichi had been mostly civilian-fostered… well, a large portion of the Marines were civilian in mindset as well, even with some rather famous figures like Tsuru and Hina combating expectations.

Tashigi had a dream for justice (and epic swordfights) and the grit to go through with it. That was worthy of respect.

Den Den -Tashigi's resolve crumbled. Some part of her still thought of Sakura as her wide-eyed, baby-faced, and ever-so-slightly shorter kouhai - who could beat her in a fight 95% of the time and talk his way out of it the remaining 5%.

" _Alright."_ A pause. " _But you're letting me pick, of course."_

"Of course. I absolutely defer to your judgement in all things sword-y, Miss Sword Fanatic," Sakura swore with straight-faced solemnity.

" _Still wearing bright red all over the place like a glaring target?"_

Ah, the traditional in-joke.

Sakura deftly jabbed back with a bland, "Someone who unironically wears florals can't criticize my own sense of fashion. And it's only a target if you manage to land a hit."

They laughed together - the humor was more in how many times they'd rehashed this particular bit of dialogue, not in how funny it actually was after having heard it so many times by now - and then moved on with the roughly once-monthly call.

.

.

.

Of course, when she finally encountered Straw Hat Luffy, it was by complete coincidence.

While on vacation, actually.

But that's a story for another time.

 **.**

 **Sakura!Coby Part 6: (takes place sometime between 4 and 5)**

 **Contact**


	14. Rei1: modify

**-Rei-**

 **.**

So, she was a princess now.

With a king and 'father' like hers, Sakura would've much preferred to enter the Pure Land after that mission that went inexorably downhill _fatally_ fast. At least then she'd be surrounded with familiar friendly faces who'd been lost before her.

Vinsmoke Judge was not friendly at all, but he was, to her despair, rapidly becoming more and more familiar. That tended to happen when you were born as someone's offspring.

He reminded her of the worst kinds of human beings. Some unholy amalgamation of Orochimaru and Danzo, maybe.

Albeit, a less self-centered, less intellectual-minded Orochimaru, _without_ the subtle and slick plotting, and _with_ a more… pragmatic focus on _results_. And he was Danzo, if Danzo had been picked for Sandaime the first time, and decided that instead of rigorously training a secret army to do Konoha's dirtiest work, he would rigorously train an open army to prepare for… aggressive expansion.

She knew Judge was researching cloning technology with some famous governmentally-funded scientist. She hoped, not just out of spite, but for the greater good, that he'd never find it.

Sakura didn't think she'd ever hated either old enemy as much as she did Judge. Only he, after all, had ever managed to strap her down to an operating table, knock her out with a general anesthetic, and proceed to modify her on a genetic level.

Her state as a chakraless, barely-in-control-of-movement, totally and utterly helpless _infant_ at the time of said sedation and surgery meant there hadn't been anything she could do. Taking away her agency, and unable to defend herself…

But maybe that was just the terrifying loss of autonomy and absolute vulnerability of the moment speaking, putting her comparative memories of hatred out of perspective. There was a special kind of caustic hatred she reserved for the snake Sannin and the deluded patriot, after all. It felt a little unfair to categorize Judge too far above them in terms of how deeply she ached to see them broken and bleeding before her.

(When she woke up in her own bed, she laughed bitterly at the mirror. Reiju's formerly Yamanaka-blonde hair had colored into her personal shade of pink. The cherry blossom motifs were going to haunt her to the next life, too? What a _joke_.)

She redoubled her efforts to get herself back up to par after that incident. Forget taking it slow and just learning to walk again, she clung to the walls and dove right into running. Being able to remember since her second birth was more of a curse in that she couldn't remove the memory of her unwilling modifications, but that was no excuse to not exploit the resilience and healing being a 'modified human' gave her, in order to get a jumpstart on self-improvement. Sakura had originally settled for just regaining fine motor control first, and then plotting out the strictest practice schedule a baby could take. Now, with the concerns of placing too much stress on her developing body abated, the once-again pinkette was free to fling herself headfirst into the heaviest workouts she could take with a superhuman physique and a this-would-make-a-jounin-laugh mentality.

Grimly, she rigidly followed the drug and, later when she aged, training regimes, playing the part of the obedient daughter as well. Refusing would do nothing but hurt her position, while accepting it for now allowed her to further boost both her abilities and her esteem. She needed every bit of power - physically or otherwise - she could get, without chakra to aid her and stuck here for the foreseeable future. Reiju's body was, with all the constantly updated experimental enhancements, rapidly becoming a better base to work from than all except perhaps an Uchiha or Hyuuga or Senju, and even then it was debatable. It far outstripped herself as a civilian child, to be sure.

But the important keynote here was that Reiju was still a child, no matter how good the base. She'd need time and a lot of effort to reach the sort of skill needed to escape Germa Kingdom and/or defeat Judge, who she had a very hard time seeing letting her leave the family.

Sakura was a long-term planner. She had heaps of effort to invest, so all that she could do was bide her time and grow. It might take until she was a teenager again, or it might take until she was a full-fledged adult, but she _wasn't_ going to stay here forever under the thumb of Judge, like the good little military commander prodigy she was portraying herself as.

She didn't serve Germa 66. There was only one paramilitary organization she'd pledge herself to, and it was in the surprisingly capable hands of her former genin teammate, a world away.

But she could sure pretend with the best of them, for now. That cost her nothing except self-respect and some dignity, which was a small price to pay for the admittedly great benefits.

The only truly shining good thing about this whole deep-cover infiltration experience had to be Vinsmoke Sola. Painfully soft but unbelievably sincere, the woman kept trying her best to be a loving mother to a daughter who didn't really seem to need one, having apparently popped out with self-control, common sense, manners, and no craving for attention.

Sakura had already adjusted her persona accordingly early on, expecting this. She was, by all accounts, the perfect child to have. Respectful, polite, attentive, studious, good-natured, even-tempered, and just childish or affection-demanding enough to satisfy worries.

But there was something in Sola's eyes when she hugged her…

A parent's intuition? Or a keen people-sense? Either way, Sakura was fairly confident she heavily suspected the truth, and felt guiltily grateful for her daughter's attempts to conceal it.

Still, guilt about gratitude aide, she had tried to stop the modifications done to Sakura, once she realized that they certainly weren't as safe and noninvasive that her husband had implied. That in itself counted for a lot of points in her book, considering she'd been the only one in the large castle to object. And Sakura, perhaps out of some guilt herself at not being able to honestly provide Sola the innocent child she so dearly cherished, was already quite generous with her points there. It wasn't Sola's fault she wasn't Mebuki - who, to be honest, she also had a share of guilt for, seeing as she'd stopped being much of a daughter to her, either, after the disastrous Chuunin Exams. Life-changing events could be both good and bad, and were, regardless, always incredibly distracting from things that seemed… less important at the time, like staying in frequent contact with family.

Then Sola got her wish.

When the sole Vinsmoke child was three, the matriarch became pregnant again. This time, with male quadruplets.

Between Sola's ideals and Judge's ambitions, it was inevitable that a storm would brew.

And eventually, it thundered.

 **.**

 **Reiju!Sakura Part 1:**

 **Modify**

* * *

 **A/N:** **Ask and ye shall receive. People wanted Reiju. Bellemere is after more of her.** **I have an idea for Perona. Shirahoshi's on the backburner.**

 **How far I can go with Rebecca? Is a Revolutionary Reb!Sakura readying herself to retake her kingdom too radical of a divergence for people to accept?**

 **Hina prompts would be nice - who does she come across between graduation and canon? Where does she go besides Loguetown? The problem is, pirates will either be arrested or avoided. Although, if they're on the side of the greater good... she may be convinced to turn a blind eye or temporarily aid them, so long as it doesn't get out that she did…**


	15. Rei2: argue

**-Rei-**

 **.**

Sakura was eavesdropping on an argument between her 'parents'. An obedient daughter wouldn't be, but she counted herself as neither actually obedient or really their child.

"We have one prodigy daughter already, dear, can't you be content with that? Reiju never had any emotion removement procedures done, and she's as talented as a soldier five or six times her age!" Sola attempted to appeal.

"Reiju has far exceeded my expectations," Judge conceded willingly, almost proudly, before immediately hardened his expression. "But you can't modify for that level of natural maturity and ferocity to improve. I don't know, to this day, how it happened, but it's a blessing we can't expect to see in any successors. Betting on and leaving a multiplying force like this up to sheer chance is too risky. Not when there's already an obvious alternative to even the playing field with the sort of edge that the more advanced modifications could grant. These are a recent development, specialized to take advantage of the growth process in the womb, so it's too late to apply to Reiju, but that doesn't mean we should pass up the opportunity to improve our sons. It's just the sensible thing to do."

She staggered, as if struck, and wobbled slightly. Sakura could hear her audibly struggling to take controlled breaths.

" _How can you stand there and say that this is_ _sensible_ _!?_ These are our children you're talking about, not soulless _data charts!_ … Is that all they are to you? No, don't answer, just please, stop this madness before- before-! I was too late to prevent Reiju's modifications, but I'm refusing _this_ now! If you take away their hearts, I can't even be said to be giving birth to humans anymore! If you wanted machines instead of sons, then why did you even marry me!?" she screamed, losing her temper for the first time Sakura had ever witnessed.

Judge was unmoved. "You 'refuse'? … Do you think your 'refusal' will convince me to weaken our children's futures, when I can ensure they'll be gifted and powerful enough to be victorious in every battle they face?"

"This- This isn't the man I married," Sola implored desperately. "He loved me and I loved him, and I knew he was kind enough to provide the best for our children - which is _why_ I loved him. Where is that man now, Judge? Where is he now…? Because I can't see him standing in front of me anymore."

Woodenly, her husband turned away, resolve evident.

"He's right in front of you still, Sola. He's never left, just gained knowledge you'll never understand. This _is_ the best for our children, can't you see? This will make them strong enough to go against _anything in the world_ and come out on top, if everything proceeds as planned. The strength to prepare for the harsh demands of life is the greatest kindness I can _give_ them. You're carrying the next generation of rulers and commanders… you just don't understand it yet, Sola. Your values of _kindness_ and _compassion_ … _they_ will be the ones to hurt our children with impossible dreams."

With those cold words ringing in the resounding silence, Judge left his wife's room. When the door closed shut with a click of finality to it, and she could hear her 'father's' footsteps marching away with military precision, Sakura dared to crawl out from her hiding spot under the queen-sized queen's bed.

Her 'mother' was crying, noiseless except for her desperate gulps of air and loud sniffles. For as beautiful a woman as her, tears were the one thing she apparently couldn't pull off gracefully.

Sakura rushed to soothe her. Soft cooing and reassurances placated her enough that she let herself be tugged down onto her bed. It felt mildly embarrassing to curl up around the older woman and cuddle her around the waist until she calmed down, but that was distant concern on the pinkette's list of priorities.

Sola wasn't a bad person, after all. If anything, she regularly radiated the sort of purity and peace and pleasantness that seemed unreal. Sakura didn't know why Sola had married, or how she then put up being the wife to a person like _Judge_ for all these years, but she had.

Just for that, Sola deserved many things, all of them good. She certainly didn't deserve this.

"Would he?" Sola asked her quietly, suddenly appearing like _she_ was the child asking for comfort in this situation. Her chin was tucked over Sakura's head, so she couldn't see the expression on her 'mother's' face at the moment, but the question was enough to give her a good - and tragic - guess. "Would your father really just… disregard my refusal?"

Sakura hesitated, unsure how to answer in her role as a daughter and not someone else: ninja, medic, teammate, apprentice, hero, teacher. It had been so long…

Sola chuckled sadly. There was no bitterness - the woman, incredibly, didn't seem to have a genuinely mean or ill-wishing bone in her body. Her delicate arms tightened around her, and even though she could easily break the hold, she held still and didn't. In this position, she was perfectly primed to listen to both Sola's woes and steady heartbeat. Her blonde hair, the pinkette noted absently, smelled faintly of flowers.

"Who am I trying to kid anymore? No, of course he would. He hasn't been the person I thought he was for so long… and maybe he never was. Oh, my dear Reiju… I've never stopped regretting being unable to protect you, that day, and all the days following as I watched you drive yourself into the ground for the sake of fulfilling your father's demands. Now, it seems I'll have more regrets to bear for your brothers. Looks like your foolish mother's words really do mean nothing in this place anymore."

Something hot and wet dripped into her own hair.

… but maybe it didn't matter how long it'd been. When you've spent three years playing the part of a perfect daughter, perhaps it sank in somewhat. And okay, maybe she was getting too attached for this. Unprofessional, but she wasn't _actually_ on a deep-cover infiltration right now.

Sakura twisted around. One childishly plump hand reached up to pat Sola's cheek. "I train for my own demands," she confessed. "Not his. And your words will always mean everything to _me_."

Sola wiped away tears and tried to curve her lips upwards. "That's sweet of you say, but-"

"You have a plan to fight the modifications, don't you? Or if you don't, you will soon," Sakura interrupted confidently, unwilling to let the woman go down another spiral. Quite frankly, they couldn't afford it right now, not when they had no idea how big of a window they had either before or after the surgical procedures to effectively nullify them. She looked up with her indigo eyes, trying to impress her seriousness upon Sola. "I'm going to help you, so Kaa-chan won't have to do it alone. You can trust me - we'll share the burden.

Her mother blinked, surprised at both her speech and the motherly endearment, and then smiled.

"Thank you, darling. Thank you for… for everything. … You're so smart, Reiju. And you're right, Kaa-chan has an idea… but are you sure you can help?"

"I want to."

And that was enough.

After Sola briefly explained, they began scheming their drug heist in earnest.

Ah, mother-daughter bonding. How cute! It was truly an adorable scene.

 **.**

 **Reiju!Sakura Part 2:**

 **Argue**

* * *

 **A/N: Anime says blue eyes. Manga says purple.**


	16. Rei3: dose

**-Rei-**

 **.**

Sneaking into one of the smaller labs was easy.

Deciding what she really wanted to sneak out was hard.

Sakura stared down at the innocent-looking pill in her hand for a long moment, biting her lip indecisively.

She knew how to make it more potent.

As it was, this experimental pill simply had the prescribed effect of 'neutralization'. It was actually a side-project of the main militaristic research focus, with the idea that it could become standard equipment as a weak panacea against all poisons. It had turned out both not reliable enough to be authorized for further development, and also a double-edged sword. In a tenth of subjects, it worked _too_ well by breaking down more than just poisons, at the cost of rapid deterioration of the subject's health, while not working at all in the others. Death had overtaken or seemed imminent for two-thirds of the affected subjects.

It was her mother's idea. Despite the uncertainty of effect, and the harsh consequences of 'success', it remained her best hope for counteracting the modifications Judge had performed on her womb. Seeing as she wasn't allowed to leave the castle unwatched, and Germa 66 didn't really delve into scientific advancements that didn't have some sort of combat application, she didn't really have a better choice.

Its products, considered failures, were scheduled to be disposed of in about a month. Nobody was going to miss one pill vanishing, and the effects were vague enough to not give away the exact source.

During their research efforts for the plan, Sakura had paid close attention and read the archived research notes left behind on more than simply this _one_ abandoned project. Just upping the dosage wasn't going to improve effectiveness. But combining it with several other 'failed' pills in the room, that aimed for the effects of 'enhancement', 'counteracting', and 'health', and 'emotion', who had been passed for Sola's preferred pick… just might. If she remembered correctly, the effects should combine and build off of each other, while their individual side-effects might actually alleviate the side-effects of the 'neutralization' drug.

Theoretically. This - 'undoing womb modifications not involving any chakra' - wasn't exactly a case she'd ever come across before, although there had been a few similar experiment papers scavenged from one of Orochimaru's hide-outs.

And the testing of medicine was a lengthy and elaborate process, as any trained professional was aware of. Rushing things and hoping for the theory to work perfectly in the practical wasn't practical at all.

It was more 'asking for a miracle'.

If she didn't give her the pill, Sola's willpower was strong enough that the women would likely find a way later to get it herself, endangering her in her fragile state as she grew more heavily pregnant. It had taken their combined efforts and a few months to find the drug that best suited their purposes. Her mother was already weakened enough by the stress of carrying quadruplets to term, not to mention the strains that the surgical modifications performed about a week ago put on her. She was bedridden right now, and that was the only reason she'd allowed Sakura to go ahead with the heist as planned instead of her.

And now Sakura was wavering.

If she attempted to increase the potency of the very experimental medicine, who knew what would actually happen? Would it work? Would it fail, and make her mother worse?

It wasn't likely it could make her unborn brothers even worse emotionally than what Judge had done, but there was also the chance that it might worsen them in other ways. There were no trials or tests she could run on this before Sola, and medical knowledge screamed that it was insanity to consider giving such a treatment to a patient anyway.

Tsunade would've crushed her bodily and maybe tossed her apprenticeship out for such blatant malpractice; this was the sort of thing that licenses were immediately revoked for. The only way she could justify it was if it was some a last-ditch move in the middle of a high-stakes mission with her charge at imminent risk of dying in her arms.

Sakura wasn't sure this situation qualified. Although, grimly, she had to admit that her mother probably valued the stakes just as highly.

Footsteps were distantly approaching the closed laboratory door. Judge spent a lot of his days here, and randomized his visits unpredictably. Her mind kicked into overdrive, frantically running analyses.

Time was running out fast to make a decision. When Judge caught her in here, Sakura could talk her way out of it _once_ with naive curiosity, but then he'd increase security measures. Making another trip to steal the pill would be impossible, and she couldn't chance the even less prepared Sola doing something reckless to swipe it herself.

Make it stronger, without knowing the effectiveness or side effects? Keep it the same, and assume the outcome of Sola's plan will be left solely to fate? Or swap it out later for a sugar pill, and live knowing that her mother will fall into despair, possibly resenting her forever if she finds out the pill provided had been a placebo?

Stronger, same, swapped?

Her mother could die if she didn't swap it. But would Sola rather live to see her children grow up the heartless machines she feared, or die for the stronger possibility of saving their emotions?

She knew the possible consequences of this plan when she asked Sakura to help her. Her mother was _prepared_ to die for this, and it would be disrespecting her potential final wish if Sakura didn't agree.

Judge would disrespect her wishes easily. She didn't want to agree with him.

Dying happy from knowing she'd done her best for her beloveds, for progeny she might not ever get to know personally… Haruno Sakura had come across plenty of such parents in her lifetime experience, and could recognize one when she saw them.

Her mother's life or her happiness?

Sakura clenched and unclenched her fingers over the pill, flexing thoughtfully as she sized up the path she'd have to take to nab the necessary potency increasers and be in an innocuous, explainable position when Judge entered.

There was no chakra here. There was something else, but it didn't feel like it could be used for healing anyway. If birth complications happened… there wasn't any Germa technology specialized for that purpose. Sakura herself would be as useless as any normal three-year-old in that situation.

Think like a medic or think like a daughter?

Reiju hadn't been much of either so far. She'd started to lean towards the latter, but that was a very recent development.

Maybe it was time she picked one to commit.

.

When Judge opened the door and impatiently shooed out his curious daughter who had wandered in by mistake, the fun-sized pinkette toddled out with more than just one pill palmed into her pockets.

Sola gratefully received her daughter's report and reassurances, bravely preparing to down the glass handed to her: a concoction of water, with various ground-up powders stirred in, and some honey for taste.

Haruno Sakura had been a very good ninja and an even better medic at the cost of losing much contact with her civilian family. Vinsmoke Reiju was going to be a very good sister and an even better daughter if it killed her - or if she had to live with her mother's premature death permanently on her conscience.

Sakura had protected her comrades like they were her family. Reiju was going to protect her siblings _because_ they were her family.

Her mother swallowed, and gave her another smile.

She smiled back, swallowing her own unease.

There was no room for regrets anymore. What was done was done.

.

Four healthy baby boys were delivered and swaddled in numbered blankets.

Vinsmoke Sola died shortly after childbirth.

She had her usual gentle smile on her face when she went, completely content.

The normally impassive Vinsmoke Judge was solemn at the sight of her visible fading, with silent tears streaming down his face. He only began vocally weeping and wailing after his wife - the only soft and tender thing about him - beckoned him to lean down so she could whisper something in his ear and kiss him one last time.

Her mother next gestured weakly for her daughter to come closer. She was young and short enough to not need any leaning over. When a delicate hand, its skin beginning to cool, laid itself over her own chubby child's fingers, she had to fight to not flinch.

She listened with utmost care to her mother's last words to her, stone-faced.

"… care… your… brothers… good… girl… love… you… alllhhhh…"

Sola trailed off into an exhale.

Eyelids slid shut over blank eyes.

Her hand slumped off from the smaller one, which desperately clutched it tighter.

She finally let herself collapse into an ugly, heartfelt, keening cry.

The pale, unmoving corpse in front of them held none of Sola's grace or life or laughter. It was a mockery of what Sola had been to them, made all the more mocking for how peaceful she looked in passing.

Her formula change better have worked. She wasn't sure what she would do if it hadn't.

There was nothing else to do but train and wait for her brothers to grow up and start showing results.

Judge enveloped her in a hug, and they clung together to mourn for the precious woman that they'd both just lost.

It was the one and only time Reiju would ever see Judge as any sort of father.

 **.**

 **Reiju!Sakura Part 3:**

 **Dose**

* * *

 **A/N:** **Rei!Sakura is the first to begin mentally referring to herself by a different name, and referring to** _ **Sakura**_ **as the different… entity, perhaps. This has only the significance you decide to give it.**

 **EDIT: Also, I need your opinions: Reiju's poison abilities = more Lineage Factor mods, or a Devil Fruit (like the monarch butterfly Zoan theory)?**


	17. Rei4: failure

**-Rei-**

 **.**

The drug - one of them or all of them combined, it was impossible to isolate, only to speculate - had done the trick.

After a year, and several monthly examinations, the Vinsmoke patriarch could no longer deny the mounting evidence.

Somehow, the fetal enhancements had failed to take. Not just the emotion suppression/elimination procedures, but the physical improvements had as well. The rate of failure varied quite a bit, but all of the quadruplets had turned out with some percentage of each.

Physical testing, in concern to resilience, regeneration, strength, and overall Exoskeleton growth rate, was achieved through methods that were… unpleasant for Reiju to bear witness to, yet duty and morbid fascination made her unable to look away. The effectiveness of those enhancements were ranked pretty much in successive birth order, and from what Judge exclaimed in his personal rants, on average less than 50% as effective than her own enhancements had been at the same age.

They were fluctuating, too. Judge feared his experiments were destabilizing. Reiju feared her brothers were.

Compassion testing was achieved through the arguably less unpleasant method of causing a person to cry, and seeing how each toddler reacted to it - i.e., on the scale of tears or utter indifference. First were their caretakers, and then each of the quadruplets themselves. Here, the effectiveness order went more randomly: Sanji reacted all of the time, and then Niji, followed narrowly behind by Yonji, with Ichiji the closest to a coin toss for empathy/sympathy.

(Truly, what original names. As stunningly original as her own name, in fact. It was pretty clear that Judge had named her as well, instead of her mother.)

" _DAMN that WOMAN-!"_ he growled through gritted teeth, shaking slightly in rage as he clutched at the table in front of him for support. Judge smashed a fist against the steel surface, and then, unsatisfied, whirled around to fling the stack of examination reports onto the ground.

Leaning down, in his shadow, Reiju began silently picking up the papers from the floor. It was what was expected of her - and making herself 'useful' was a small price to pay for being allowed in to observe the check-ups. The firstborn's act of obedient daughter was enough for Judge to trust her with the privilege of entering the labs… under supervision, of course, and under strict orders to not touch _anything_ he didn't tell her to.

But that definition could be and _was_ often extended with lenience. Unless he was in a particularly foul temper - and she had a keen enough eye and experience for telling that sort of thing - he was fine with letting her sit quietly in a corner to read through some laboratory materials, while he himself tinkered around or shouted at slacking scientists.

(You might think that the berating would land him in a bad mood, but it usually was what elevated him out of one. Reiju solemnly sent mental thanks to the poor employees every day for taking the man's mind off of what _exactly_ she was reading. He might not be so lenient if he realized they were his own notes, swiped while he wasn't looking and replaced before it seemed he'd need them. The man just thought he was getting more distracted these days by the _problem_ posed by his four youngest children.)

Judge wasn't a good father. He was a practical one. A self-sufficient, responsible child was what he most approved of, and thus would look most favorably upon. Reiju adjusted her attitude accordingly - without her mother to tailor to now, it was in her interests to eliminate the childish and attention-seeking parts _she_ had wanted to see.

Not that she wouldn't much rather be _Sola's_ ideal daughter than _Judge's_. But this was the best way to carry out Sola's wish for her to watch over her siblings.

The Vinsmoke patriarch was even _proud_ she seemed to be following in his footsteps, and taking an interest in military-applicable science.

It sickened her to let him think she'd ever admire a person who'd experiment on their own children, but she kept up the farce. The advantages she gained were too useful to sacrifice continued closeness. For example: increased freedom, increased access to the newest scientific knowledge, increased authority…

And an increased ability to track every development of her brothers, even if she was helpless to interfere with the _testing_ right under Judge's eyes.

(He was even, in a throwaway comment that he likely didn't expect her to remember, considering bringing her to Reverie in a few years.)

Reiju stood up, straightened her collected stack of papers, and offered it expressionlessly to the man she'd never acknowledge as her father.

He sighed and accepted them, before grunting a vague thanks. "I'll have to do some remedial additive surgeries, at this rate, to get them anywhere near your level…" Judge muttered resignedly, more to himself than to the 'you' he was referring to. "And if the deterioration doesn't stop after that, a specialized drug regimen may need to be devised…"

With his back turned, he didn't notice her stiffen slightly. He likely wouldn't have thought anything of it if he had.

At his wave of dismissal, the pinkette executed a proper bow, and then left to follow the train of maids leading the toddlers back to the nursery they were temporarily sharing. She spent all the time not already dedicated to training or scouring the library archives there - even taking her meals with her just-learning-to-speak brothers, and occasionally napping with them as well since Judge never visited the nursery himself - so she was already a very familiar face to the quadruplets. More of one than their father, to be sure, and a far friendlier one to boot.

Sanji lingered behind a step to wait for her. Yonji, the youngest and weakest - although 'weak' for a modified human still outstripped any normal comparison - was already tired out by the trip, and rested sleepily in the arms of one of the nursemaids. The two oldest were bickering over something too far in front to notice - Ichiji was already showing a flair for competitiveness that clashed with Niji's streak of confrontation, as much as children their age could _have_ distinct personalities, anyway.

"Rei-nee?" the most sensitive one of the four asked. He always cuddled closest to her in their nap piles, and had offered her his second-favorite stuffed animal the other day after their regular group storytime. Reiju thought highly of establishing a solid vocabulary base. "Hold hand?"

She didn't believe in picking favorites. It was harmful to an easily influenced mentality, like in their current stage of development.

But, privately, Reiju admitted to herself that she probably leaned just _slightly_ more towards Sanji than Yonji, and then the eldest two were fairly tied.

Her stiffened shoulders finally relaxed.

"Of course, otouto-chan."

 **.**

 **Sakura!Reiju Part 4:**

 **Failure**

* * *

 **A/N: Thanks to people who reviewed in with their opinions.** **One Piece Magazine apparently points to an unnamed unrevealed Devil Fruit… but it's been 'wrong' before about Sabo. And the other Vinsmokes have electricity/explosions…? We'll go with Lineage Factor manipulations.**


	18. Rei5: brothers

**-Rei-**

 **.**

Of course, Reiju was relieved at the news that the emotional modifications had failed, if only partially. Her mother's sacrifice - and the guilt she now carried with her - hadn't been in vain. The physical modifications failing were of some concern, but only so far as the complications might affect their quality of life. She wouldn't love her brothers any less if they'd been born perfectly normal, after all.

Judge, naturally, was not.

He was _livid_.

He'd been proven wrong from beyond the grave. Those enhancements hadn't been cheap, either. Now, without Sola around in the existential sense, he couldn't even glean what she'd done, so as to focus his research into counteracting it. He couldn't even be sure she _had_ done anything; without evidence, there were only suspicions. But his modifications couldn't have failed on their own - he'd tested them before on his daughter, and she'd turned out exemplary!

(His daughter possibly having something to _do_ with the modifications failing never entered his mind. Sure, he knew she'd been close to her mother, but the girl was a perfect little trooper. She'd never showed any signs in his presence of being tainted by the woman's disgustingly deluded dreams. In fact, after Sola's death, she even began exhibiting the sort of emotional control that he'd so dearly wished to inspire in his sons.  
Really, there were no complaints there… except for a small niggling worry about the soft spot she seemed to have for her siblings, easily ignored.)

People were already avoiding the topic of the late queen around the surviving members of the royal family, but after seeing how the king had snapped at the last servant to bring her up accidentally, they studiously redoubled their efforts.

The most he could do was try and salvage what he could from the wreckage of his work.

Reiju would've done her best to secretly sabotage his efforts, if it weren't for how she _couldn't_. It was impossible for her to cross him as she was right now. She was still too weak, and she was self-aware enough to admit that an attempt would do nothing good. And the 'remedial' modifications, same as the initial ones she'd endured during the first terrifying incident, would only benefit them in keeping up with Germa's future plans. The drug regimens, too, weren't much different from her own; except, in the quadruplets' cases, they not only _added_ to the enhancements, but also aided in keeping their bodies stable from the tampered fetal alterations.

They needed those drugs to stay healthy. It was likely a direct consequence of the drugs she'd fed their shared mother. Karma? Much as she hated it, they - and thus, she, since she was tying herself to them - now depended on Judge for their literal continued well-being. Reiju was definitely working on figuring out how to synthesize and schedule the necessary medicinal routines herself, but it was going to take a while; Judge still wasn't letting her use any of the laboratory equipment, and the stabilization research notes were kept under his highest vigilance.

She tried to comfort herself with the knowledge that the surgeries were only… _difficult_ to go through when you knew - and could remember - what was going on. Like she had.

In a few months, maybe a year, their own experiences would've already eroded away. Long-term memories in adulthood typically didn't begin forming until around age four or five.

Their hair colors all changed post-mods, too. She assumed the prior ones done in the womb had become too weakened to cause _that_ specific quirky effect. It made telling them apart much easier, anyway - really, whoever said all toddlers look alike hadn't been too wrong.

Ichiji was the Karin-knockoff, Niji was the Konan-knockoff, Sanji was - after a small but significant distinction from light blond to downright _yellow_ \- the Naruto-knockoff, and Yonji was… eh, a Zetsu-knockoff? Nah, the shade was more like that one rather forgettable missing-nin from the Tea escort mission.

Or, as she preferred to think of them as, her genuine-article brothers. Haruno Sakura had never had any siblings before, so this was new to Reiju, but she liked to think she was doing a pretty good job so far.

.

When Judge took her aside after the surgeries, and told her sternly to keep an eye on her brothers and make sure they grew up 'right', he was assuming that she shared his ideals of _might_ makes right.

She didn't correct him. Just gave a cute salute and earnestly promised to take good care of them indeed.

Oh, she'd make sure they grew up ' _right'_ , all right. And she'd _definitely_ be keeping a _careful_ eye on them.

But not for him. For Sola, and the values she passed down.

The quadruplets were going to be in their most impressionable years for the next decade, half-decade. It was a lengthy investment, but Reiju would take it on cheerfully.

She owed it, to their mother and to them. She was complicit in the plot that. She'd administered the dose, hadn't she? Who was she to cross a dying mother's last wish, after all that?

And… she'd made a resolution, hadn't she? Reiju was going to be prioritizing family first.

Even if, she realized reluctantly, it meant that her plans for escape would have to be shelved for the future.

At least until she'd worked how to reproduce the drugs they needed for their particular modification maintenance. And until they were old enough to understand what it meant and could make their own decisions stay or leave with her. Reiju refused to leave anyone behind to live with Judge, who would undoubtedly do his best to twist them into what they would've been with the functioning-as-originally-intended modifications. But at the same time, she was cognizant of how hypocritical it would be of her to force them to go if they truly didn't want to.

And anyway, if they really ended up buying into Judge's philosophies, then they were already as inhuman as Sola had feared. Reiju owed them nothing then, even the title of a brother.

… No, no regrets. Don't think about such depressing possibilities so soon! She'd picked this path and she'll stick to it with a smile and a scheme. She was already forming a bond with all of them very early in their lives. It was natural for her influence to shape them in the absence of their mother, wasn't it?

Even if it took a lot of subtle lessons and a lot more outright lectures! Even if she had to practically stalk them 24/7 to watch for infractions and then _beat_ the so-called 'softer emotions' into them if they ever showed any signs of reverting to the standard their experimenter set! Even if it meant subverting Judge's authority and replacing it with her own respect! Tough love combined with _positive_ psychological tactics for the perfect maternal influence replacement, let's do this!

Vinsmoke Reiju was going to be the best big sister and _ultimate moral compass_ ever! And the younger Vinsmokes were going to have a well-balanced childhood and stable mentalities and _like_ it! The worse half of Sola - because she was undoubtedly the better half of the two - could just take his own manipulations and go jump in a Sea King's digestive tract to be worked over by five different kinds of stomach acids!

 _Shannaro!_

.

(The castle maid poked her head around the corner of the nursery, and then quickly withdrew it like a turtle scuttling back into its shell.

… She decided to leave, and pretend she hadn't just seen the four-year-old royal, already famous for her unusual maturity and dignity, pose dramatically over the beds of the four princes' linked cribs.

With an enthusiastically pumped-up fist and the _scariest_ smile she'd ever seen, Princess Reiju somehow managed to emanate a dark aura around her. Which sparkled at the edges.

Waking up the children for feeding could wait until a little later, couldn't it? They looked so p- peaceful in there with their s- sister, yeah.

And anyway, the poor maid felt she direly needed some life counseling first about what counted as a rational fear.)

 **.**

 **Sakura!Reiju Part 5:**

 **Brothers**


	19. Rei6: stalemate

**-Rei-**

 **.**

When Reiju was five, and more importantly, when the quadruplets turned two, the brothers were separated. They moved into their own individual rooms and out of the communal nursery.

Yonji complained about the end of nap piles and group storytimes, with his limited vocabulary.

The fourth son had begun to figure out that, with his age and weaker constitution, he could get away with more clinginess and brattiness than the rest of his brothers. The maids spoiled him rotten, more so than they did all the other princes. (She feared she might be a little too indulgent herself, but consoled herself that she still enforced boundaries.)

Reiju had tried to disabuse the notion of submission out of the castle staff, but it was a hard process when the king was the _king_ , and she knew her siblings shamelessly took advantage of their royal positions behind her back.

(Well. Mostly. Sanji was a good boy, or at least a much better actor, and got extra hair ruffles for that.)

Oh, they acted like angels enough in front of her. But that was likely because she did her best to foster the impression in them that she was omniscient, and wasn't hesitant to punish them with tickles or mildly-painful pinches when they acted out.

Still, it seemed to be working somewhat, so she continued that campaign of camera-and-stick, with metaphorical carrots showering on them otherwise to inspire mutually reciprocated affection and instill loyalty, and just sought to head off any really nasty personality traits before they matured further. She still had plenty of time.

His older brothers, upon hearing the youngest's complaint, leaped onto the bandwagon of vocal protest against it, with their own particular reasons: Ichiji was a sleeping fiend, Niji liked hearing about other places, and Sanji enjoyed finding out what candy or sweet treat she'd brought with her that day.

This only continued for a brief moment until Reiju, fondly exasperated, quickly quieted them with a promise that they could still gather in her room after dinner for a daily story and nighttime snack, although naptimes would have to stop. She had extra combat practice to make up for and research to burn through, now that they were old enough to garner their own spaces.

Ichiji was placated with the gift of her biggest pillow to add to his stash, when he still appeared dissatisfied.

That was laughably simple to resolve - just immature whims overriding childish restraint. In a couple of years they'd be too embarrassed to request either, Reiju knew, so she could allow some indulgences now. She was their main source of affection, after all. And it wasn't like it wasn't fun for her, too, to spend time doting on her precious little siblings.

The clash between her and Judge over said precious little siblings, around the same time, wasn't anywhere near as simple to resolve.

.

This was going to affect her facade of the perfect prodigy child, who could shut off emotions on demand.

Reiju had never raised her voice with her father before. She showed a spine, of course - Judge didn't respect total pushovers, and he sure didn't raise them to rule a kingdom, either - but outright dissenting against his word had never been done to his knowledge.

"They're far too young. How is a two-year-old supposed to endure the kind of training you're going to demand of them? That schedule is far too stringent for their bodies and minds to handle! They've barely stopped being toddlers, it will break them!"

But this was important enough to risk shaking that cover.

Unimpressed with her argument, Judge dryly poked some holes in it. " _You_ weren't _even_ two when you began _your_ training. If I recall correctly, you actually argued to start your training earlier, so you began a few months shy of what I intended. I didn't hear you saying anything about barely coming out of toddlerhood then, and you've come out just fine. In fact, you've exceeded my expectations, and you continue to do so with your determination to improve. Your brothers will be fine. Unless you don't believe in them?"

His tone, as usual when addressing her directly, was a shade warmer than with any of her siblings. It was, however, rapidly cooling as he continued on.

"That was different," Reiju disagreed, shaking her head stubbornly. "And you _know_ it was different, sir."

"How?" he snapped.

"I- I'm a genius, and I'm not being arrogant in saying that. Every tutor you've ever hired for me and plenty of researchers who you haven't all say the same. You know it, I know it, I'm just on a different level. I was mentally ready for what it would take to succeed in gaining strength at a very young age, but I was also speaking and reading and writing at a much earlier age than my brothers! The princes aren't ready for the rigors, and their base enhancements, while the same or better than mine after the remedial modifications, still depend on weekly medicine intake to keep stable! Pushing them through these kinds of difficulties will adversely affect their well-being! _Sir._ "

"You've said it yourself, their modifications are working as good or better than your own at a base level, and I'm confident that they'll be fine as long as they don't skip a dose. Even if they do, the destabilization won't start affecting them again for another day or so. And destabilization just means some fluctuations in their enhancements. Vinsmokes are made of stronger stuff than that. We don't break easily. Your brothers will do fine, and they will _succeed_. The experience will harden them up, with any luck. I haven't had any in finding a way to salvage their emotional suppression modifications, so the manual way will have to do."

"But _-_!" she started to retort hotly. Exposing them to violence so early? _Encouraging_ it? She was different, she cheated, or Haruno Sakura had cheated, _whatever._

Only prodigies in the strictest ninja clans began training _this_ intense _this_ early, and look at the kind of people they turned out to be! 'Balanced' was generally not a good adjective for them. 'Deeply messed up while pretending or actually believing they were fine', perhaps. The practice had probably been more common in the Warring Clans Era, but commonality didn't equate to justifiability.

And Germa Kingdom definitely didn't have the sort of soldier demand problem that had been the main reason for that, not with the kingdom's burgeoning success in creating a _clone army_.

She didn't know if she was going to the Pure Land after this world or wherever people here went, but if it was the latter, she didn't know how she'd look Sola in the eyes without _trying_ to stop this madness.

"Enough!" he interrupted, voice dropping. Brows furrowed, and his typical frown deepened at the edges, threatening to fall into a scowl. Now, he was merely… displeased. But push him any more and he'd get angry, actually angry at her. "What has gotten into you, Reiju? This- unreasonableness is unlike you. You are my most beloved child - the best of my children, the only first-rate first-try success! I'm often lenient with you, I am. But I won't tolerate such defiance to my authority from _anybody_. Why do you insist on questioning me?"

Reiju gathered herself up.

She inhaled.

… exhaled.

Looked down demurely, and folded her arm across her chest. Bowed at the waist, with military precision.

After a moment, dropped to her knees and gave a heavy, formal bow.

"Yes, sir. Apologies for my doubts, but they are my brothers. I hope you won't hold my- expressed opinions against me in the future."

He regarded her with dark eyes. "… Apology accepted, Reiju. I understand. But I am your father, and their's, too. My decisions are final."

No, he really, really didn't. And he sure didn't act like how one should.

Or maybe he just didn't care to do so.

.

That was just the first of many challenges between her and Judge over her brothers.

She lost that one.

She didn't intend to lose more.

It took some time to work her way back into his good graces, but such an argument was but a small blip in his radar, really. And she was his most successful experiment, while her competition for favored child was limited to the four princes who weren't old enough to grasp complex ideas or eloquent speech yet.

She successfully managed to avert, postpone, or lighten many of the additional modifications or training that he proposed, under the guise of it being detrimental to his interests if they placed undue stress on his sons who were still in early development. It might even… _worsen_ their conditions.

Judge didn't appear too worried at this until she further implied they might therefore suffer drastic reductions in fully-matured ability.

Fucker. Bastard. _Asshole._

But at least he'd agreed to open up the libraries entirely to her, and after she'd pointed out a calculation error, she'd been allowed supervised access to all of the laboratories including the secretive cloning chambers. She began learning about the Vinsmokes' connections in the Underworld, about the tactical theory behind a Germa 66 commander, about the responsibilities of the Kingdom of Science's ruler. Judge told her to start studying up on foreign royalty if she wanted to be taken to a Reverie as a teenager.

His attempts at incorporating a Devil Fruit-esque ability in each of them by fiddling some more with their Lineage Factors had gone through with just her at age six, after she'd convinced him to observe for a while how it took to her and developed, in case of another unexpected result like the fetal modifications. He'd agreed to wait until the quadruplets were at least eight to perform similar additions.

.

"They're still too weak, anyway. The privilege of such powers might not be deserved, or might be wielded wrongly. One of them _defended_ a commoner the other day when I disciplined them for failing to pay proper respect, and another stood up and tried to _stop_ me. _Disgusting_. A royal shouldn't exhibit such a softhearted attitude. I don't know who's been encouraging them to follow their mother's values, but royalty demands _others_ serve _them._ Kindness is useless in the world we live in," the Vinsmoke patriarch decreed.

 _Fucker. Bastard._ _Asshole_ _._

So that was why Niji had had a bruise on his cheek yesterday, and why Sanji had seemed so downcast.

But she could only hold her tongue in the moment and nod, empty smile affixed to her obedient daughter mask.

"Truly disgusting," she parroted in an echo.

Judge looked at her with silent scrutiny, before she apparently passed muster and satisfied his suspicions. He smiled back, patted her on the shoulder, and swept away to check on the progress of his army.

.

Reiju was sorely tempted several times to just… slip something in his food or drink. Something like… what happened to her mother, maybe. That would just be karmic, wouldn't it?

It would be so _easy_ , too. She could negate any poisons in her system now - they will still discovering what else she could do, as it seemed to evolve - and her brothers were still just a little too young to be trusted to eat at the same table with her and Judge. If she waited a few months until they turned four, that would change.

… But that was it. It'd be too easy. She'd be a fool to believe that he hadn't implanted precautionary measures of his own against such things, no matter how much he pretended to - or maybe actually did - trust her.

And anyway, so what? What would happen next? Where would they go, when she still had to find out the manufacturing needs for the drugs keeping the quadruplets stable?

Reiju was selfish enough to leave the Germa Kingdom in chaos without a leader and no clear line of succession, but she wasn't selfish enough to risk her brothers' lives.

Her mother would be so disappointed if she backed out now of her commitment to their health.

Locked in this stalemate, with Judge openly trying to force his sons to cultivate ruthlessness and Reiju subtly trying to undo any progress he did, a few years passed like the chilliest breeze ever.

Soon, she was ten and the brothers were seven.

 **.**

 **Sakura!Reiju Part 6:**

 **Stalemate**

 **.**

 _Bonus:_

 _Very carefully, she brought the blades closer… and then snipped._

 _Looking at her handiwork, Reiju gave a satisfied smile._

 _Her smile twitched, and then slipped from her face when it was all undone a few seconds later._

 _Damn it! Why did the regeneration factor have to apply to her eyebrows when it didn't apply to any other hair growth!?_

 _What had she done to deserve this!?_

* * *

 **A/N:** **I don't queue chapters for this fic. Reviews are good. Feed the }i{. Flap, flap, flap.**


	20. Sh2: crash

**-Sh-**

 **.**

Celestial Dragon? Here? Crashing in the Ryugu Kingdom?

Sakura had sent her faithful first Sea King after Otohime for protection, when she saw her swimming rapidly out of the palace and heard the guards' cries of 'Celestial Dragon'. Katsuya the Third had been with her the longest of her 'pets', and she trusted her to keep her new mother safe from any… typical World Noble actions, but she worried nonetheless.

If she could, she'd swim right after her, but logic held her back.

Well, that and the direct orders of King Neptune.

He was drawn outside when he noticed through the windows the hard-to-miss Katsuya III leaving her side, thus giving away her position… and the positions of her brothers, who'd been playing with her outside in the gardens when they'd all seen their mother shoot past in a hurried golden blur.

They'd all been prepared to chase her tail out of concern, but their father noticed their intentions in time to restrain them.

Obviously, nobody was going to let the vulnerable young princes - much less the six-year-old princess and current incarnation of Poseidon - anywhere _near_ the scene, even if they couldn't stop the queen. Technically, if she really tried she could brute force her way over there with ease and the help of some Sea King friends - not exactly 'pets' but more than just 'contacts' - but that had its own long-lasting repercussions. It wasn't worth it.

But just waiting around for one of her precious people to return to her brought up frustrated memories and a psychosomatic itch in her tail. Sakura had done a lot of waiting, and practiced a lot of patience, and right now the latter was seeing some wear and tear.

Hopefully, her instructions to Katsuya III to simply 'don't let anyone hurt her' would be enough. Sea Kings, she'd learned after months of testing out her limits, were much smarter than they first seemed - at least, after talking to a Poseidon they were. Before, it was difficult to say for certain.

With the rest of the Ryugu royal family left behind, Sakura sat impatiently in the throne room and wondered what was happening down at the crash site.

The lack of line of sight visibility from here was probably the best for her temper. Not nerves, those were good. But her temper was already fraying from the tears she couldn't seem to stop, and the effort it took to convince Neptune and the princes that she was fine, really.

They couldn't even hear anything from here.

"What do you think Mother is doing right now?" Manboshi mournfully questioned Neptune.

He just shook his head helplessly.

.

.

/ / "Don't do it!"

 _Bang!_

 _Crash!_

Three things happened in swift succession.

Otohime leaped in front of the cowering Celestial Dragon, Mjosgard, shielding him bodily with her weaker-than-average self.

The gun-wielding spokesman of the group of recently retired Sun Pirates was unable - or perhaps, in his subconscious, just unwilling - to stop in time, and shot at the kingdom-beloved queen.

And a massive, mottled, blue-and-white Sea King, who nowadays answered to Katsuya the Third, landed heavily in the water behind Otohime, shaking the street and the ship.

Its serpentine neck craned over the rooftops to indifferently observe the situation, critically waggling its eyestalks, visibly unimpressed.

If it had landed closer, it would have squashed them all and collapsed the already tattered shipwreck, not to mention the surrounding houses. If it had tried to shield Otohime herself, it would have arrived too late, and then squashed them all and collapsed the already tattered shipwreck, not to mention the surrounding houses.

As it was, its entrance appropriately shocked everyone into a long enough stillness that, after the fact, Otohime was able to shakily stand up and take an open-armed, starfish stance. Her back was to the World Noble, her front to the crowd of her dear citizens, one of who had just wounded her arm.

"Drop… your weapons. Please, drop your weapons. There's no need for violence today."

"The Queen has been shot!" belatedly shouted that one person in every gathering who simply must state the blindingly obvious, once they'd all wrenched their eyes away from the hulking but passively unmoving beast shadowing her much smaller form.

"Queen Otohime…" the guilty gunslinger trailed off, taking up the task of breaking the silence next. He sounded plain lost. "Are you… protecting that monster? Why?"

"Drop your weapons, all of you," Otohime repeated, expression firmed into resolve. She didn't move, making it clear that she was, indeed, protecting that monster. And nobody thought for a second that the monster in question could be the Sea King of the two behind her. "Children are watching. They shouldn't have to see this. Hatred… should not be passed onto the next generation. They are our future, and innocent of all this _hatred_."

When the barrage of incredulous retorts and bone-bitter grievances came, she winced but refused to even wobble. Her blood dripped slowly from her uncovered ripped sleeve.

Mjosgard stirred dazedly on the pavement. He seemed half-convinced that the bullet had actually hit him still.

"Please," Otohime pleaded. "Please, listen to me. I understand your hurt. I do, I do. I _hear_ it, all the pain and suffering this person put you through."

"This _human!_ "

"This _slaver!_ "

"He's a _World Noble!_ They hate _all_ of our kind!"

"I know!" she spoke louder, to be heard over the ruckus. "But you can't push your own experiences of humans onto the children! They must meet humans themselves and form opinions, _themselves!_ They have to! Grudges, no matter how terrible and rooted in justification, cannot be passed down! Please… you do not have to forgive this person, I am not asking that much of you. I just ask that you drop your weapons. There will be no death today."

More silence. This time, nothing broke it except for Katsuya the Third's steady huffs of breath.

And then came one clatter. Then another. And then another, and another, and another…

The mob in front dropped their weapons.

Otohime smiled, relieved, her defiantly held chin dipping as she relaxed her stance and tightly gripped her arm injury at last. Her eyes roved across the faces of the children in the crowd, whose innocence would be preserved another day. This was good. This was great. She could handle this, break up the gathering, take the World Noble back to the palace for treatment, and hopefully hitch a ride to the surface. To Mariejois, where she could start on her

Mjosgard smiled, too, as he reached greedily for his own dropped weapon, and-

 _Whump!_

It was a softer sound than its initial landing, but the sound - not to mention the action - of Katsuya III calmly leaning forward to snap up the Celestial Dragon still provided enough of a spectacle for all the gathered observers to freeze, startled.

He was left dangling upside-down, half in the air, half in the beast's mouth, carefully trapped between two towering teeth. The half in the air was the top half, as evident by his unmuffled, piercing, unending shriek.

Gasps came.

Then, a few scattered, nervous giggles as Katsuya III sternly shook him back and forth like a kelpdoll, clearly displeased by the eardrum-hurting screams.

When the Sea King boredly yawned, flashing more than just a _little_ bit of fang in its gaping maw, Mjosgard fainted dead away and the gathered observers broke into uninhibited laughter, which only grew when he was spat out skirtless with a wrinkled expression of distaste, and after a moment, the Celestial Dragon's missing skirt was vomited up next to him on the cobblestones, half-dissolved in a pool of acid slobber.

The queen was the first to move, taking advantage of the crowd's change in humor to smile and laugh along, while subtly coaxing her daughter's 'pet' to reluctantly accept a cargo of World Noble for the trip back to the palace.

The skirt… was left for lost. Some people had already surged forward to snatch a scrap for a souvenir of the day they'd seen a Celestial Dragon humiliated by a Sea King. The more entrepreneurial sntached up more than just a scrap, to sell off with the story when it was inevitably retold and rehashed repeatedly.

A rather famous Fishman she recognized immediately stepped up to lend her a hand in hoisting Mjosgard onto Katsuya the Third's head. A slightly less famous, but equally familiar Fishman followed. You couldn't have a captain without a first mate, after all.

"I can handle crowd control, your majesty," Jinbe rumbled next to her. He was dependable as ever. Otohime knew she could trust him, and also knew that she could never properly express how much it meant that he'd take the Shichibukai position for the standing of Fishman Island, and the betterment of the entire Fishmen species, not to mention all the broken-up families reunited by the amnesty-granted freed slaves.

"And I," Aladine offered quietly, "can treat you both." There was nary an eye flicker as he stated this, despite how much it must cost him inside to not only spare the World Noble like she preached, but also to actively aid the slaver, considering his history.

She offered them both a grateful nod of assent instead of all the words she didn't have time for, and took the chance to leave before anything else could happen.

Yes, this was good, this was great. She was going to get her kingdom's representation, and the eventual recognition of Fishmen and merfolk as being equals of humans.

It would take a long time, maybe longer than her _life_ time, but this?

This was a strong start.

They returned, an odd trio, to the palace.

.

.

Her daughter chased her down later, separately, for her full story of what happened and _why_.

"You're trying to break the cycle of hatred," Shirahoshi murmured softly, absently. More to herself than her mother. Like she'd just come to some sort of realization. "That's what you really want."

Otohime blinked. She'd never heard it put exactly that way before, but something in that phrase… rang true with her. It sounded so simple… and yet, it captured the essence of what she strove to dedicate her life towards, in order to carve out a better future for her children to swim in.

She nodded slowly, and then more decisively.

"I am, I suppose."

Shirahoshi nodded, too, seeming to come to some sort of conclusion on her own. The pinkette looked up with a stubborn jaw and a determined gaze.

"When you come back - _safe_ \- from the surface, I want to accompany you on your signature-gathering trips. I know you think I'm young, but I'm old enough to understand. I'm going to help you do this. We'll get this Reverie representation you want, and then we'll see what comes after. Right?"

It was an unfamiliar experience, Otohime though distantly, being the first one of the pair to be brought to tears. Tears of happiness.

"Right," she choked out, smiling brightly up at her daughter, following her ideals. "And thank you, Shirahoshi. Your mother is… so proud."

"Oh, now you're making _me_ cry," Shirahoshi muttered, flushing a shade darker than her hair and trying in vain to stem her burgeoning (literal, considering her size) cascade of tears.

 **.**

 **Sakura!Shirahoshi Part 2:**

 **Crash**


	21. Sh3: security

**-Sh-**

 **.**

"Oh, my beloved child, your mother really does appreciate your interest in her work and _loves_ having you follow on her rounds, but..."

Otohime hesitated.

How to word this the best way?

Her darling daughter was so determined and dignified in her own way, but, well. She was also a bit... overly sensitive? And very prone to breaking into tears.

Of course, everybody was too polite and adoring to mention it directly. Not when the young girl herself always appeared to be a mix of embarrassed and frustrated at how an emotional spike could result in the rained parade of unfortunate passerby.

Shirahoshi, obediently keeping close to her - as had been one of the queen's conditions for taking her along with her signature-collecting campaigns - swished her tail and cocked her head curiously. Her Bubbly Coral's flotation ring bobbed along with her.

The former movement caused a mild tremor in the immediate area.

She was... big for her age, but Otohime fiercely loved her daughter no matter her size. It was endearing, how every expression was magnified. A mother never stops worrying, and her only daughter's very mature outlook on life was good, but not what you'd expect from someone her age.

The fits of tears and her collection _hobby_ were almost a relief, being a constant reminder that Shirahoshi was, indeed, still a child after all.

A... constant reminder.

Lurking just a tail-swish or two behind its mistress, the only one of her daughter's pets that would comfortably and safely fit in the narrowest of Fishman Island neighborhoods copied the already unusually sized smelt-whiting mermaid's actions.

This caused a… slightly larger tremor.

Suddenly Otohime found exactly the right words for what she wanted to say.

"... but did you have to bring a Sea King with you?"

Shirahoshi pouted.

One bat of those baby blues from their 'Genius Princess Poseidon' would send any adoring and proud kingdom subject instantly fawning, and the royal family was perhaps the most tenderhearted when it came to their collective 'treasure'.

She was far from being the literal runt of the litter, but she was the youngest of them, nonetheless. There were just certain people who inspired protectiveness despite being very much capable of handling themselves; the underwater princess was one of them.

The tears didn't help.

Otohime's maternal instincts allowed her to resist the dreaded 'otter pup eyes' better than most anyone else in the castle, but when Shirahoshi's eyes began watering… like they were doing now…

"Sorry, Mother. I know it must be a bother having me follow you everywhere, but I really do want to see how you convince people to forgive and change their minds about human prejudices. It's so inspiring, and it just means a lot to me, and I just feel a lot better having a Katsuya around…"

Watering, watering, watering…!

Well, the goldfish mermaid caved as fast as her husband and sons.

"You could never be a bother, Shirahoshi," Otohime hastily soothed. "I'm glad, I really am, that you're swimming so close in my wake. Our family has been so supportive of my endeavors, but I know it's still difficult for many to understand that there shouldn't be any distance between people's hearts when we all share the same sun, just… differently. Fishmen and merfolk, and humans: we can be friends. We don't have to live in fear and hatred of each other. There is another way."

"Something is only impossible if you believe it is," her so-smart daughter suggested, sniffling back more tears, and then posited more solemnly, "the cycle of hatred _can_ be broken."

She beamed warmly. She loved that phrase, and had immediately resonated with it when she'd first heard of it after the conflict with the sunken World Noble.

It embodied her ideals so… perfectly. Although, she still didn't know if Shirahoshi had made it up or heard it from someone else herself. The girl gave no hint of the latter, but the former just seemed… not quite correct.

What were a few Sea Kings? They made Shirahoshi happy, and they were no danger to anyone with the immense control the princess showed. Nobody was even scared much, anymore, not after having had a while to adjust to the idea of _neutral_ and even _peaceful_ Sea Kings floating around the place, attracted by Shirahoshi's practice calls.

"Yes, exactly!"

.

.

/ / Sakura secretly smirked to herself.

Hah, this alarming tendency for crying was good for something after all. She knew that learning to tear up on demand would be useful. That hadn't been a subtle guilt trip by any means, but it didn't need to be to pass muster in this form and with this audience.

She would pump a fist, but that was a bit dangerous in a crowded streetfront, so she settled for congratulating herself with a _mental_ punch and triumphant shout of 'Shannaro'!

Hook, line, sinker. Mother 2.0 was distracted from Katsuya the Twelfth, easy.

She was going to continue having a not-so-tiny undercover bodyguard and a _definitely_ -not-tiny implicit bodyguard escorting her around the public and she was going to _like_ it.

It was exasperating but understandable how Otohime insisted on personally meeting face-to-face with the citizens she was trying to convince. It was more exasperating and less understandable that she refused to take along her husband's pet whale, Hoe, for transport and additional security.

But that was alright.

Sakura had her own pets for that.

(Admittedly, it was more like she had made amiable contact with all of the Sea Kings in the wide area, and then befriended most of them, with only a rather limited number consenting to staying on with her on a foreseeably permanent basis as 'pets'. But the differentiation was so slight most of the time that she didn't bother correcting anyone's presumptions, and soon the automatic generalization sank into her mental commentary as well.)

Otohime should not be, could not be, and _was_ not allowed to die of anything preventable. Not on her watch. The woman was kind with kinder dreams and deserved that much for all the care she'd shown. Sakura considered each member of her new family to be pretty decent and one of her precious people to protect as fiercely as Naruto always preached, but she was especially vigilant on the safety of Otohime, who was the most fragile of the royal family. Neptune was in the prime of his life, after all, and Fukaboshi, Ryuboshi, and Manboshi were all naturally more robust than their mother. _She_ bruised… with concerning effortlessness.

Sure, there were the actual palace guards flanking her, but the goldfish mermaid was whimsical and moody and _fast._

And Ryugu Kingdom was big, without the sort of spread-out 24/7 security detail or surveillance of potential internal dissidents that any Kage would have in their home village.

And also the palace guards just weren't that good, to her jaded standards of running escort missions.

And _also_ -also her somewhat smug standards of fitness.

She was still working on getting her new parents to approve official self-defense lessons for her, so that they'd stop treating her like a glass doll with the key to an oceanload of potential ticking bombs. But she was fairly confident, nonetheless, that she could take down any of the guards in a straight-up fight with just the retraining she'd been putting herself through on the sly.

(Sakura was still whiling away at retraining her stealth. Otherwise, she'd be even more confident in hypothetically picking off the royal army with traps and ambushes. She was more of a close-combat specialist at heart - favoring the visceral satisfaction of feeling the force behind your hits land - but stealth was included in the job description for a ninja. [Even Naruto had mastered the arts of trickery and diversion through his cheat-level Shadow Clones.]

It was difficult to practice going unseen, being the very high-profile and extremely attention-grabbing sight that she was, but Sakura remained optimistic. At the very least, it was a distracting challenge, and she liked her challenges distracting to be certain. What a waste it would be to spend a second chance at life utterly bored half the time, even after trying to speed through all the tedious repeated-again lessons.)

It said something about the circumstances that Sakura firmly felt Mother 2.0 was safer _in_ the presence of her crybaby daughter and a known-to-be highly vicious wild animal than _out_ of it.

Those circumstances being that the crybaby daughter was doubling for a kickass kunoichi (albeit shrinkified and, uh, some other things) and the known-to-be high vicious wild animal was perfectly harmless…!

Unless she wanted it to be otherwise.

Sunlight Tree Eve would go dark before someone managed to get a fatal jump on the combination of Otohime's innate Observation Haki and the current Poseidon's watchful eyes.

 _Many_ eyes, not all of them connected directly her.

Sakura leaned back a bit, and Katsuya the Twelfth - now _there_ was the runt of the litter, but it was fine, the rest of its 'siblings' were dutifully patrolling around the underwater island or stationed nearby on her orders - immediately dipped forwards a bit to serve as a cushion.

The pretty pink princess fondly patted her loyal steed. And murder machine.

It seemed a little disloyal to think, but Sakura was beginning to find that she was preferring Sea King faux-summons over either slug or dog summon animal contracts.

 _Sorry, Katsuya Original. You'd still be more useful if I wasn't underwater in prime Sea King dominance, I swear, and I'll always remember your soft smooth squishiness. No other summon held a candle to you for healing, or communication. Unfortunately, the salt would probably still affect you._

 _Pakkun, your pads could never compare to Katsuya-sama's entire body, and the dog pack's slobber could never rival Katsuya-sama's clean and sweet-smelling slime, and also all of you stole food from us, like, all the time. Not as much as Kakashi-sensei himself actually did, but close. Plus, I've seen you all genuinely swim, and for dogs you can't pull off a great doggy paddle for long._

.

.

/ Otohime glanced back.

The blonde smiled. Her precious daughter looked so lost in thoughts, floating along absently with her head in the bubble clouds.

She wondered what deep things that child was contemplating with such an adorably serious expression on her face.

Suddenly, Shirahoshi smiled herself and giggled briefly.

Otohime's own smile widened and softened. She turned around, facing back to the front, to hide it before the other female became self-conscious.

Well, whatever it was, it was always nice to know her baby girl was growing up happy, despite the future expectations that would rest on her as the current Poseidon - and a rather prodigious princess in her own right.

(Although... she had a feeling that Shirahoshi would force those expectations to _break_ before she ever _bowed_.)

Swimming along like this on a peaceful day, accompanied by her favorite child, progressing magnificently on the interspecies cooperation petition for a Reverie representation, and listening to the most wonderful music - the amused laughter of her loved ones - the queen of the merfolk and Fishmen felt quite lucky to be alive.

Indeed, she felt just golden.

 **.**

 **Sakura!Shirahoshi Part 3:**

 **Security**


	22. Sh4: sweep

**-Sh-**

 **.**

Ah, Fishman District.

Geography, considering her circumstances, was one of the few classes she paid avid attention to, what with all the very relevant and entirely new material and all.

It was a little ways off, separate entirely from Fishman Island - but still under jurisdiction of Ryugu Kingdom.

Technically.

The place, according to both palace gossip and the firsthand reports of her faithful Sea King spies - insomuch as creatures their size could go about covert activities - had become a lot rougher since Fisher Tiger had left for his adventures. Royal authority held… less authority.

He'd been greatly respected, and upheld a lot of the order there. Personally, Sakura admired him as much as any other average citizen. His adventures made for great stories whenever he came back to the underwater island to rest and recuperate, and although his widely publicized rampage across Mariejois would undoubtedly make it more difficult for Otohime to achieve Reverie representation and Ryugu Kingdom recognition, she couldn't quite bring herself to feel anything but approval and satisfaction at his spat in the face of the World Nobles. She knew Otohime felt the same, for slightly different reasons.

However, his visits back home grew scarce as he continued his crusade against slavery. It was a popular campaign with the Fishman Island residents, more popular than Otohime's interspecies cooperation drive, to the point where many decided to join him. There was even a royal guard who left his post to join up, she remembered. It wasn't like she couldn't empathize why such a worthy cause would inspire so many to journey away.

But without his stabilizing and commanding presence, the already-rough district was rapidly devolving into a hotspot for criminal types to gather. The distant location and lack of strong lawkeeping forces made it perfect for them, and other outcasts of society, to hide out in.

'Was'.

Sakura, naturally, planned to do something about that. She was finding herself to be… rather attached to Ryugu Kingdom. There wasn't exactly a Konohagakure or a Hokage around here for her to stay loyal to, so she saw no conflict in devoting Shirahoshi's life to furthering and bettering the status of Ryugu Kingdom.

It was what nobility were, in theory, supposed to do: improve and protect their territory, in return for the love and tribute of the subjects.

Of course, she'd assassinated and witnessed her fair share of corrupt nobles in the Elemental Nations - the old adage about power corrupting was an old adage for a reason - but Sakura believed, objectively, that the current royal family were the rare sort of morally upright nobles. They were certainly beloved.

And maybe she believed, just a little bit, in fate. It was hard not to, after the whole Indra and Asura thing had pretty much proven that reincarnation with a purpose in mind was real. Who knows…? Perhaps it was her turn as the third part of the genin Team Seven to fulfill some sort of reincarnate duty.

Or her reincarnation was entirely random without any sort of complicated fate or destiny factor involved.

Either way, she was playing the part of Shirahoshi, princess to a kingdom, for now. Sakura felt it was only right to try and live up to what the possible soul of Shirahoshi might have wanted to become, before her own soul came blundering in from another world to stay.

.

.

Which meant massive plausible deniability 'clean up the neighborhood (and kingdom)' Sea King-centric campaigns!

 _While_ she pulled on all of her (painful) memories of talking tactics (and losing _oh-so-many_ games of Shogi) with Shikamaru in order to send out strategies from her palace rooms via secretive Sea King messenger chains!

Luckily, the castle inhabitants, and pretty much everyone else in the kingdom, was used to their princess' constant coterie of 'pets' circling around her. Seeing her whisper with a smile to some of them throughout the day only elicited warm affectionate cooing at the adorable scene of a little girl having fun with her friends.

Plotting such operations from an unsuspected position of trust, under the reasoning of benefiting one's home, was rather fun! It was, of course, on a completely different level of morality and stakes than what Danzou ever did with Root, but Sakura could sort of see how the man could have enjoyed it.

He was _still_ a filthy traitor and bloodline-stealing conspiring power-hungry manipulative warhawk who deserved _every one_ of the deaths it took to take him down and _more_ , but yeah.

She could sort of see it.

It wasn't easy maintaining plausible deniability for an undertaking of this scale, when everybody and their mother knew Princess Shirahoshi had the power to summon and speak to Sea Kings, but she did her best to limit eyewitnesses to any unusual activity. Her Sea Kings obediently wrecked known pirates' and wanted people's getaway ships and hideouts only in the darkest and most abandoned hours. When it came to stopping crime - theft, general violence, gangpressing - they followed orders to only intervene when they saw the victim wasn't going to be helped by any passerby. And the easiest of all orders was to leave slaughtered sea animals - free food, raw - in the most poverty-stricken areas.

It wasn't a foolproof or completely accurate system.

The Sea Kings only had so much intelligence or sentience, so she had to keep her directions simple. And so many human concepts flew past them, especially at the end of a messenger chain. Plus, there was a lot she couldn't fully account for, when prevented from cutting out the lag and surveying the situation firsthand.

But it did help much more than it hurt.

And it didn't hurt that the occasional mistake in who exactly was being wronged only served to obfuscate her role in orchestrating the 'neighborhood watch'.

(When she was sure she seemed old enough that her parents 2.0 wouldn't panic, Sakura was prepared to publically extend her net of Sea King-centric safety patrols and benevolent surveillance over Fishman Island itself. Ryugu Kingdom had no internal ANBU or constant circulation of off-duty and on-duty ninja, or even a police department like the Uchiha used to govern.

But until then, she had to settle for winning trust in her capabilities and quelling ill intentions within the most troublesome area of her control.

… Ugh. Was reminiscing on Shikamaru's drawled blunt criticisms of her strategy game enough to make her start thinking like him?)

The ruffians rounded up who _did_ see something were _gently_ convinced by the toothiest grins she could offer secondhand that, maybe, perhaps, they shouldn't mention this embarrassing incident of their failures.

Because, really? Mucking up a mugging or having an illegal weapons shipment demolished or disbanding an anti-human riot rally because of a passing Sea King's whims was just bad luck. And blaming it on the princess? Pfft, as if she had the capability when she was but an innocent little child, frolicking in the faraway palace. Sure, she's the current Poseidon, but thinking that _every_ Sea King accident is because of her is just paranoia. Do you know how many there are in the sea?

Really, the more you try to indignantly explain in the bar that whatever messed up wasn't your own fault, the more it becomes obvious to everyone else that you must've had a few pity drinks too many. Street cred's sinkin' by the second, and no amount of Bubbly Coral can hoist you up again. C'mon, buddy, there's the door.

Sakura was rather proud of the drop in crime rate that stunned Neptune when he excitedly discussed it at dinner over the next few weeks.

.

.

With nobody quite knowing when the mystery attacks would strike again, there was a fragile sense of safety occurring. It was, at least, an entryway for the royal guards to take advantage of, and try establishing a more permanent peacekeeping presence than previous attempts, which all ended up rebuffed by scornful residents distrustful of their ability to help anything.

Neptune had been at a loss for what measures to take beyond just closing the place down, and admitted sheepishly to putting the matter off until the effects of the unintentional but undeniable segregation grew more serious. But now, with some other force doing a large part of his job for him - the coelacanth merman's bushy brows furrowed thoughtfully in her direction - he could direct a lot more resources into effectively reviving and renovating the district. He was even thinking of rebuilding the original institution - an orphanage.

"Shirahoshi, would you mind helping your father out with a little something-jamon?" Neptune suddenly asked.

Otohime, Ryuboshi, Manboshi, and Fukaboshi all turned in their chairs to look at her curiously.

The girl in question smiled sunnily, broken out of her musings on if she should emphasize to her school of Sea Kings how very off-limits Megalo - Fukaboshi's new pet, gifted by a retiring royal soldier - was in terms of food _or_ teasing.

They knew better than that, and it wasn't nice to keep ganging up on and scaring the poor shark, no matter how funny it was. No. Bad monsters. Go hunt down that pod of _wild_ horn sharks or that giant squid that drifted in on the current a month ago, if you're so aching for a chase and think you're too good to forage around the Deep Sea anymore for your prey.

Well, except Katsuya the Third. It was a good monster, wasn't it? Oh yes it was, oh yes it was!

And Katsuya the Twelfth, she was disappointed in you. She expected so much more. Shame, shame, shame. No Bananawani biscuits for you.

(The Sea Kings seemed to derive some sort of perverse pleasure out of eating the flesh of their natural predators. They were expensive, and almost impossibly rare to source, so Sakura only permitted them as treats.

Or to make a point.)

"Of course not, Father. What is it?"

"It might be a bit out of your range, but I believe your control is strong enough now. Would you be able to ask some of your pets to tow the Noah out of Fishman District and into the Sea Forest? … It would clear up space for new building plans, I think it's about time the kingdom does some restoration of such an ancient artifact-jamon. It will have to be ready when 'that day' comes…" Neptune explained, slowly, and with a touch of regret in his voice for not having been able to accomplish those goals before now.

His wife, so much smaller, comfortingly patted his hand, and then swam up to kiss him on the cheek. "You've done your best as king so far, dear, so there's no use wondering how you could have changed the past. Focus on the future, that's what I always say," Otohime reassured her husband.

The motions must have felt feather-light in proportion, but the orange-haired giant glowed with matrimonial contentment anyway.

Fukaboshi looked embarrassed at the soft gesture of love, struggling to retain his stoicism. Ryuboshi pretended to gag, holding no such reserve about expressing himself. Manboshi, the one most concerned with food, sort of shrugged and went back to his meal.

Sakura thought it was sweet, and wondered if she should try extracting more information from the Sea Kings about the significance of Noah. Previously, one or two had murmured vaguely about it before dropping the topic, and she'd never paid it much attention until now.

"I'll do my best, Father."

 **.**

 **Sakura!Shirahoshi Part 4:**

 **Sweep**

 **.**

 _Bonus:_

" _Wooooooooooaaaaaaah!"_

 _Ryuboshi screamed with sheer excitement as he streaked past them._

 _The leftover trio of siblings on the ground watched him silently._

 _Shirahoshi was smiling. Fukaboshi appeared apprehensive. Manboshi looked plain dubious._

 _Ryuboshi streaked past again._

" _This is aweeeeeeeesoooooooommmmmme! I've always wanted to ride on a Sea King! Thanks, Shirahoshi!"_

" _My pleasure!" the only princess called back. She turned to face the other grounded two encouragingly. "Anyone else want a ride on Katsuya the Third? It's very friendly. Perfectly safe."_

 _Was her smile mocking? Couldn't be. It was completely innocent, that of a child's._

" _Perfectly safe," she repeated casually._

" _I will pass," the eldest prince denied, politely but firmly._

 _Her emphasis was… not exactly reassuring._

 _The third prince, upon another wary glance, laughed nervously. He didn't seem as energetic as normal. "Akkamanbo… ehehehe, I think I'll pass as well."_

 _Ryuboshi streaked past once more, his oarfish skin blanched white and his grip noticeably tighter, all of his usual joviality missing from his screams this time._

" _Aaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhh!"_

 _For some reason, he never asked for another ride._

 _It was a complete mystery to the current Poseidon, of course._

* * *

 **A/N: Coming back to this for the summer. Uncharacteristically swift updates will proceed. Reiju, Bonney, Perona, Hina, Coby, more Shirahoshi, very tentatively Rebecca… all in the works. Thank you for your patience. These three chapters have been ready for while, actually; I just needed to force myself out of the mindset that the longer I went without posting, the more content I needed for a 'mass-release' to somehow apologize for my absence.**

 **Glimpse at what's coming up next for S!Shirahoshi:** **Whitebeard** **.**


	23. celebration extra: epithets

**_._**

 **100 Reviews Benchmark Celebration;**

 **Non-Canon Extra ( slight spoilers!)**

 **.**

Though the mystery of how they'd all ended up here had occupied their collective attention for quite a good while at the start, it was perhaps inevitable that the conversation, once sufficiently stonewalled at a solution, would next swing towards a comparative discussion of their similarities and differences. It was simply too fascinatingly unique of an opportunity to pass up. When else would one be able to observe how a more-or-less baseline psyche— _their_ baseline psyche—survived being reflected across universes?

…Accounting for minute deviations in their personal timelines, of course. Age, situation, and sometimes even relationships status at time of death were varied for each of them, seemingly with no particular pattern.

However, a given constant, no matter the reality, was that Sakura was nothing if not curious. And secretly competitive.

Although, considering their current company, 'secrets' didn't mean much.

"Coolest epithet? We're all big names, there's no way we aren't, unless someone's playing a long game," S!Bell-mere asserted confidently. This was to the surprise of no one; she'd been singled out early on to be perhaps the most impulsive incarnation of Sakura gathered in their group. Even so, when applied to Sakura, 'impulsive' couldn't mean less than a very calculated sort of cunning still.

The retired marine grinned, teeth bared around the bitten out, "I'll start: _Berserker._ "

S!Coby, more unexpectedly, spoke up next. They* were one of the more reserved incarnations, but apparently found nothing harmful about joining the derailing of the previous conversation. It had been going in circles anyway. There was, perhaps, even a touch of pride to their contribution. " _Bone-Breaker_."

" _Happy Haunter_ ," S!Perona shamelessly proclaimed with a casual comfortableness to her actions. She punctuated her contribution with a absent-minded twirl of her expandable waterproofed pseudo-parasol. Discovering that one of the most cheerful and relatively carefree incarnations was actually among the oldest 'Sakuras' who died had required a moment for some of the others to mentally reconcile.

"My situation doesn't support epithets," S!Rebecca demurred quietly. Her head was ducked deferentially, but all knew it was only habit, to hide the burning intensity of her gaze. It was an intensity that each was easily capable of, but which she had clearly carried for so long, that it now required conscious choice to mask it. "But one day... maybe…"

A coy flicker of amusement uplifted a corner of lips rusty by now with the practice of smiling, as she distractedly ran a hand through her bobbed hair. Perhaps S!Rebecca was unused to seeing how the mysterious space-time distortion had reverted the locks back to pink, after living years with it dyed. "... well, _King-Killer_ doesn't sound too bad."

"That's not how it works, you don't get to choose your epithet," S!Shirahoshi argumentatively refuted. The certainly largest incarnation peered down, a light frown gracing her mermaid-beautiful features. With no new-life observers around, the princess—interestingly enough, only one of several among the incarnations—was frowning more freely than her typical stance of a sweet smile allowed her to.

S!Rebecca shifted, fingers dropping away and coy amusement closing off once more. Unwilling to take a challenge from an alternate version of herself, she replied coolly, edged with familiar sarcasm, "Easy for you to say, after being reborn into the Poseidon title and a boatload of benefits. I see your kingdom has flourished under you, hasn't it? It must be nice being the _'Sea Terror'_ of the five seas."

"If you're going to-" the agitated nonhuman began, narrowing her eyes.

"Now, now, girls, you're both pretty princesses. And so am I, so let's all settle down now," S!Reiju advocated, half-facetious and half-sincere. It had been generally agreed that her particular experience as eldest child had resulted in her having the strongest 'sisterly' instincts among the incarnations as well. (S!Perona, by sole virtue of being the only one who'd ever been a mother, held automatic claim to the 'most maternal' title. Even if her demeanor often declined to express it.) "Besides, if anything, I'm the only one who's actually killed any kings so far along our current timelines. Meanwhile, I'm still stuck with the same title since my days as a child assassin, when I was basically running as ROOT for a different megalomaniacal abusive asshole. A reminder I can't get away from, it seems."

Although S!Reiju sighed wryly with her conclusion, she wore the skin of royalty perhaps most comfortably in the group. S!Shirahoshi was certainly a close second for sheer assumed authority, however.

"Still, you've done quite well reclaiming the connotations of that epithet for your own," S!Coby assured diplomatically, with a shrug of their shoulders and a faint, characteristic smile.

"Anything's better than _Eternal Child_ ," S!Bonney agreed pragmatically with a sour grimace of evoked memories. "Kid had a fucking laugh and a half about that. _'South Blue represent.'_ As if that bastard can talk, with a plain-ass _'Captain'_ …" Her grumble trailed off with a mocking lilt.

"Hah! What's with this pity party about epithets all of a sudden? I, for one, like mine just fine."

The ones who'd complained glared at S!Hina in mutual resentful silence for her interjection. The active marine smiled pleasantly back at them, one eyebrow raised over the unlit cigarette she was twining 'round her fingers.

 _'That's because you bribed and bullshitted your way into paperworking your own epithet! Your aesthetic has nothing to do with leaves, and yet you still got it!'_

 **.**

 **Celebration Extra, 100:**

 **Epithets**

* * *

 **A/N: Trying to keep to minimalist A/Ns for this story, but I had to express my gratitude for everyone's help in reaching 100 reviews. I do read every single review, and every single one, no matter how short, makes me smile. Thank you, each and every one of you, and I hope to retain your continued support in the future, as I hope you'll continue to enjoy this story, which has sort of gone past 'drabble-series' in ambition. :]**

 **Depending on what people would prefer, I may decide to do something reviewer-interactive, such as a prompt lottery perhaps, for the 200 reviews celebration. We'll see as it draws closer.**

 ** _* gender-neutral singular 'they'. This will be addressed eventually in S!Coby's plotline._**


	24. Rei7: research

**-Rei-**

 **.**

Some papers on Haki had found their way into her information-voracious hands, in her burn through Germa's royal library. There wasn't much published, and what _was_ published seemed more like a mash-up of common folk tales and personal anecdotes rather than rigorously conducted research. Apparently, despite its commonality in the New World, experts on it were rare, and experts who deigned to commit their knowledge to the written word were even rarer. It went without saying that Judge didn't exactly have much of a vested interest in Haki—not enough to actively search for materials to add to the library. It went further without saying that she didn't exactly have much of a vested interest in letting Judge know any more of where her interests lay than absolutely necessary, either.

But what was available was enough to spark her attention. And a spark was all she needed to get started on ferreting out more instruction; written word or rumors, she wasn't picky. Reiju was confident she'd find a way to cobble together an understanding from the scattered pieces of information accessible to her. Couldn't be worse than grading the initial report-writing efforts of medical interns, anyway—a favorite past punishment of Tsunade's.

Though she had precious little time to spare, Haki was rapidly becoming her new side-hobby. Sandwiched— _squeezed_ —between 'training', 'research', 'training', 'sibling/moral compass duty', and 'more training', was now 'Haki practice'.

(She couldn't slack on training. Particularly now, as she anticipated the time getting closer and closer to when Judge would begin sending her out on actual missions, rather than simply the training simulations he'd set before. He'd made no attempt to hide his intentions of this course of action over the last few months. In face, he'd good as forewarned her, telling her to be prepared to see 'real action' soon… unaware of how much 'real action' she'd already literally seen, just not as 'herself'.

In a way, it was almost nostalgic, how the timing lined up; her first mission would occur shortly after her eleventh birthday, she was sure of it.)

Based on what Haruno Sakura knew of chakra enhancement and reinforcement, both in theory and practical application, Reiju theorized that Armament would be the easiest for her to access. Conqueror's couldn't be trained, it was hit-or-miss in the lottery of genetics. The Vinsmokes had no ancestry records of it appearing, and even if it was a recessive trait, to hear the papers tell it, she wouldn't know until it decided to appear. Observation, meanwhile, sounded like a beefed-up sensor package. And chakra _control,_ not sensitivity, had been more Sakura's thing—and thus the experience Reiju had available to draw on.

And anyways, it was _extremely_ cathartic superimposing Judge's appearance over every training dummy, tree, and boulder she wrecked until she could successfully muster up—first a flicker, then a steadier if still somewhat shaky sheen—blackened skin at will.

Reiju didn't tell anyone what she'd been working on. It didn't concern her brothers. And at any rate, some more refinement of ability would have to occur before she felt assured in doing so. Right now, her Armament was crude. 'Very impressive for her age,' sure, but that descriptor still felt like nothing to be proud of—not when she often felt her 'age' to be a nebulous thing, torn between mind and body.

She also just didn't want Judge knowing more about her capabilities than what he built her for. It would make directly fighting him for serious more difficult, when such a confrontation occurred, if he was allowed to anticipate her capacity and prepare appropriate countermeasures.

… Which brought her to her next new side-side-hobby, filed under 'research'. There were no known countermeasures against Haki so far, save more Haki. There were reports of Armament overpowering Armament, Conqueror's overpowering Conqueror's. What about Observation versus Observation? Was there such a concept as an inverted Observation - the anti-Observation? Could you apply Armament to _others_ in a benevolent sense, and if so, how and what would it achieve? Conqueror's had such a small sample size that it was more of a myth, albeit a living one undoubtedly embodied by a few notorious contemporary figures, but could it have more possible effects than simply a _sleep_ effect? Mental shut-down? Could its influence over the mind be adjusted from a blunt force to a delicate instrument, effectively reproducing the theoretical effects of brainwashing?

So many questions. Only herself and unskilled Armament to clumsily test them. Most likely none of her speculation would ever come to useful fruition. Even if she did succeed in discovering something now, she was loath to ever hand more power into Judge's greedy grasp. In addition, considering the sample of test subjects she would need to participate _more_ -than-less willingly… well, unless she managed to rope up a bunch of varied Haki experts and convince the handful of scattered, living Conqueror's-users to participate in double-blind experimental trials and control groups for reference…

Perhaps in a few years she'd look back on this period as a passing phase of childhood curiosity. Externally applied Armament certainly interested the memories of Haruno Sakura the most, with the possible extension into pseudo-healing. Or perhaps in a few years, circumstances would've changed drastically enough to afford her the leisure of experimentation.

But this was now. Thinking was harmless enough, anyway. Reiju had more than sufficient self-control to separate her thoughts and actions at all times, or so she caught herself thinking.

And she just _had_ to wonder if there was _really_ no countermeasure against Haki save more Haki, or if it was just extremely obscure, or nobody had succeeded in their attempts. Although she felt firmly that no one was as allergic to commiting knowledge to shared documents as ninja were, this world's literary archives wasn't as much of an improvement as the researcher side of her soul would hope. An obscure technique passed down orally to a select system of students was entirely possible. Regardless of if such countermeasures existed currently, she sincerely doubted they would never exist.

Reiju was the first Modified Human to exist, after all—impossibility was just the stretch of failures that came before success.

 **.**

 **Sakura!Reiju Part 7:**

 **Research**


	25. Rei8: development

**.**

 **-Rei-**

 **.**

Haki wasn't the only notes she'd been perusing avidly.

If Judge discovered what she was really using his Lineage Factor notes and her requisitioned clones for—not that she _wasn't_ actually also testing the poison hypothesis she'd originally posited to him—he'd understand the potential of her work immediately. And seize on it.

Like with Haki, she was loathe to improve Judge's private army with her own quasi-medical scientific advancements. Knowing what they'd be used to do…

Judge had already given her advance warning about a mercenary contract Germa 66 had accepted on Cozia. Cozia was a peaceful little resort island in East Blue that had done nothing wrong… except commit the crime of unknowingly harboring a splinter faction of anti-World Government extremists. They were hired to raze the place to the ground, as an example to sympathizers. The Vinsmoke patriarch had extolled what a wonderful opportunity this was to prepare for her debut as Poison Pink.

.

.

(With the brothers' Devil Fruit-esque alterations coming up soon, and because she was sensing the beginning of a pattern, she asked after his other name ideas.

Keeping the dryness out of her tone was simple enough—she'd had plenty of practice, dealing with him—but keeping a straight face as Judge elaborated was far more difficult.

Sparking Red for explosions, Electric Blue for electricity, Blazing Yellow for flames, and Winch Green for self-mechanization?

 _Really?_

…They weren't the most ridiculous names she'd ever heard, sadly. In Haruno Sakura's time, there were horror stories passed around the Konoha administration about the sort of things inventors tried to register their new techniques as, with the Yondaime being rumored to be the worst offender of convoluted titles until his wife wrestled him under control. It was what passed for casual office gossip.

Reiju decided to be optimistic about her relatively straightforward moniker. Epithets, she'd learned, were culturally even more important in this world than in the Elemental Nations, where they'd already outranked clan names half the time. Admittedly, she wasn't sure if she should be more or less disgruntled by the alliteration.

But, well, it didn't matter that much. A name was a name was a knife in the dark. You made them mean what you represented. And besides; when she left the Vinsmoke name behind, she was going to shed 'Poison Pink' as well.

She had to keep thinking that.)

.

.

Unlike Haki, however, a certain degree of scientific progress was actually supervised from her. She couldn't keep all of her discoveries and speculation stifled there, not when she was obviously observed performing 'precociously' poking around the labs. Not if she wanted to keep and expand her lab access. Now was still a golden age for conducting research—young enough to set a precedent, young enough to not really have expectations, young enough to have the specific 'messing around' overlooked.

When Judge had interrogated what she had to show for her trial period of allowed access—one she'd patiently campaigned for over the course of _years_ of watching her brothers' routine check-ups—Reiju settled for suggesting only what Judge was already on his way to thinking of himself. Extrapolations of his existing research—her compromise between her continued facade of 'perfect child' and associated freedoms and privileges, and her abstinent apprehension about having a hand in adding more force multipliers to the completely loyal Germa clone army.

Which meant cheaper versions of their raid suits in development, with the most twisted poisons and bombs and diseases that Judge could tinker up buried dormant within them, to maximize results from a single clone. They were sufficiently inhuman enough in mentality and production process for Reiju to really process them as expendable cannon fodder and suicide bombers/biological weapons, through the lens of Haruno Sakura's experiences with chakra clones. And the more abhorrent an idea, the greater the odds of Judge practically bursting with happiness at his daughter's genius suggestions.

(Vinsmoke Judge was not somebody who wore happiness well. She found it utterly disgusting, really. Just like she found him to be!)

It also meant mass-produced and far-inferior versions of their own Lineage Factor modifications, contained within pill form for an instant boost in strength, agility, regeneration, etc. Essentially, a knock-off from Haruno Sakura's memories of soldier pills, and an improvement on Reiju's world's currently existing 'Energy Steroids'. They could even go commercial with the 'soldier pills' and make money off selling an exclusive contract to the World Government. However, the more lucrative option would be producing an artificially limited supply to circulate within the Underworld as black market goods. There'd be plenty who'd pay for it, just like any other drugs or ability-enhancement items. Or maybe a gaseous form that was pumped into the soldiers' helmets, or all throughout their suits, to be absorbed over time through skin for longer-lasting effects.

Judge's control complex was easily impressed by the further suggestions, slowly fed over time, of trackers implanted from birth in every clone; of biological sensors and transmitters literally built into them; of kill switches and immediate-recognition abilities granted to the royal family; of an attempt at diversifying their appearances to better broaden their skillset to cover covert espionage as well…

Just little things like that.

Judge was so pleased by her performance that he opened up even his personal stores of notes to her. The contradiction of her 'performance' producing mostly theoretical results despite her frequent usage of the labs to fiddle with materials on her own time didn't faze him; the most obvious and thus assumed answer was that she was a little girl with an ingeniously innovative mind, and there was no need to waste resources specifically monitoring her playing around in a laboratory filled with dozens of scientists, when such allowances was mere indulgence at worst and purely for inspiration at best. She was already exceeding any expectations of a 10-year-old by 'innocently' providing ruthless ideas for Judge and the royal scientists to make into reality.

This left her free to wander and subtly sabotage the worst—or 'best', if looking at things from Judge's motivations—developments to lessen how devastating they could be. Or to curl over a workspace in the corner and make microbatches of secretly improved pills and poisons for personal stockpiled use, under the guise of childishly, thoughtlessly, _harmlessly_ mimicking the actions of the adult scientists.

Hopefully, Judge had also fully gotten over his (not incorrect) suspicions about her being the one who'd continuously 'infected' his sons with Sola's 'worthless' values—built on the (again, not incorrect) basis that out of everyone else, she spent the most time and held the most influence with them.

With the notes to go off of, she'd immediately zoned in on the prize: the stabilization meds and drug regime keeping the quadruplets healthy. In other words, the most immediately practical barrier to her plan to get them all out of Judge's reach.

The recipes and underlying regime principles, she hand-copied several times, with additional translations for the more esoteric terms and instructions that even the average person could follow. The paper copies were meticulously hidden throughout her brothers' rooms. Reiju had the entire compilation memorized herself—no harder, really, then memorizing bland Academy textbooks and dense chakra control theory and dry medical texts had been.

Some of the ingredients were quite hard to find out of North Blue, however. With Germa making frequent trips back and forth between the North Blue and the Grand Line, it would be too dangerous to return to the North for a while after they left, although the Grand Line was enormous and bizarre enough to make lying low easy.

Reiju began secretly building up a stockpile of them, swiped in small bits from the laboratory supplies and stored in specialized preservation suitcases… also hidden in her brothers' bedrooms, where Judge never had any interest in inspecting. (Right next to the suitcases of hoarded medical supplies, disguise items, and money.) Manufacturing a stockpile wouldn't do for now, as the stabilization drugs had a short window of effectiveness between make and use. Stockpiling expired drugs would do nothing but cause a more noticeable discrepancy in the supplies that should be there and the ones that weren't.

With such preparations being made for escape, Reiju didn't think it'd be long until there was an opportunity to do so. She was sure that everybody except perhaps Yonji would be willing to leave with her. Even he could be persuaded if she explained that he'd be easily accepted back to Germa in the future... and decided not to mention how she hoped, after a few years completely out of Judge's influence, the youngest would realize that it would hurt him to do so.

This was a little sooner than she'd expected, but the sooner the better. The brothers were old enough to make a decision like this, they'd have to be. They should all leave and assume different identities before Judge got it into his head to implant trackers of his own, or spontaneously developed Observation Haki, or something else as random but not impossible. Hope for the best, expect the worst.

Ideally, Cozia would serve as a jumping-off point. During the attack, Judge would likely want to keep her close, but she was trusted enough right now that she was confident she'd be able to slip away at some point. Then she'd meet up with her brothers, who were left in the unguarded castle and privately told of the plan beforehand. They'd take the suitcases, change into disguises, board the ship one of the quadruplets would've found and paid passage for earlier, and sail off into a new life… before changing ships and disguises a couple more times, for good measures.

Some 'wing it' room in her vague plan wasn't necessarily a bad thing. If they didn't know what they were going to do next, it would be difficult for Judge to.

With luck, even if she couldn't get away from battle and they had to leave first without her, then her town visits would've succeeded in their intention to educate the four on how to blend in with regular people. Some attitude of nobility still clung to them from their surroundings, despite her upbringing. And the Vivre Cards she'd anticipated being useful would come in handy, beyond being a cute sixth birthday present to them all, when she had to catch up.

A look at the clock spurred her out of her daydreams. Reiju packed away her lab work for the day. She nodded respectfully to the scientist she'd been sharing a table with - the princess was only allowed to bow to the king - and left the room at a fast clip.

It was almost storytime.

 **.**

 **Sakura!Reiju Part 8:**

 **Development**

* * *

 **A/N: A bulky character (dynamics) development chapter next, then I'm at the end of my 'written up months ago, mostly finished but still needs finishing' stock of S!Reiju chapters and it's over to S!Bonney for a bit.**


	26. Rei9: storytime

**-Rei-**

 **.**

"... and that was the Conquest of the Four Nations," Reiju completed, in the middle of her 356th sit-up. She wasn't particularly breathing hard.

They'd retained group storytime as the five of them had aged. The content eventually morphed from fantasy folk tales Haruno Sakura had remembered (and carefully stripped of their casual pro-Land of Fire bias), to factual anecdotes Reiju was learning. The location had stayed consistent in her room, though.

"So," she announced. "Who wants to start today?"

It was solely a formality. The brothers typically fell into age order when starting the after-story discussion, out of habit. Of course, when they _really_ got into it, that order fell apart, and was left to her to lay down the law when things appeared to be becoming dangerously acrimonious between the brothers.

"The Conquest was important in re-establishing Germa Kingdom's return to power after the king before Father… stagnated? It showed off Father's strength and went on to be an scary example of why you don't mess with the Vinsmokes or Germa. It… also spread more rumors about Germa 66, because it was such a big event, but there weren't any survivors who would confirm or deny it, since they were too terrified to, but that terror also helped Germa 66's reputation, so… it didn't really matter if they didn't talk. You… want us to focus on how victors write history and it can be used to influence people?" Ichiji rushed to get in the first word, ending on his best guess.

He mirrored her in sit-up position, determined to copy her exercise regime, even if he couldn't keep with her repetitions.

Ichiji had outgrown naps, but not his competitiveness. He retained the strongest baseline enhancements of the four, and strove to win, plain and simple. The brother he got along best and worst with was definitely Niji, who challenged him often but defeated him just as much as the other way around.

She made sure that he understood that winning was only worth boasting about when against an opponent who could actually put up a fair fight; that a sore loser still lost every time they won, especially if they mocked the defeated; and that an individual's victory was rarely worth any sabotage or betrayal of their teammates' efforts and trust. He cared only about his closest bonds - his siblings, the two attendants who'd been with him since childhood, and... his father, who garnered conflicted feelings of resentment and loyalty from all of the princes. But he was still family, and 'caring' covered more than just positive emotions.

"Idiot-Ichi, _obviously_ the most important thing to focus on was how he went about _fighting_ the war. Father won because he stormed in when they weren't expecting it and sent soldiers to scatter any tries at forming an alliance against him. Shock-and-awe and relentless personal frontlining didn't give the four kingdoms any breathing space to regroup, and when their morale went down it got even easier for Father to rush in and crash the last-ditch alliance meeting with the other kings. Who, anyway, were almost _asking_ for it by building a base in such a strategically weak area," Niji lectured patronizingly, in the way that only younger siblings who thought they knew better could achieve.

The second-eldest lounged lazily on a giant, pink, zero-shaped beanbag chair - a gift from Sola. Its bittersweet connotation of a dead mother had faded over the years to Reiju, as the brothers grew up and freely made use of it, unaware of what its true significance. The upside-down smirk he sent at Ichiji made it clear he'd purposely meant to one-up him.

Niji, too, had only grown into his confrontational nature. A rebel without a cause—well, as much as an 8-year-old _could_ be—the second baseline strongest traded off the position of strongest fighter prince frequently with the firstborn son. Conflict was where he flourished, and winning or losing didn't matter as much; it was the thrill of the bout that concerned him, a careless attitude which rubbed intense Ichiji the wrong way, while making similarly lighthearted Sanji the one he was friendliest with.

She made sure that he understood there was a time and place for picking fights; that if somebody was genuinely refusing to battle, ambushing to force them into it was not okay; and that the most acceptable outlet or cause for him to champion was righteous justice, as the strong should defend the weak. He cared for those he knew personally, the ones close to them, and at least took into consideration the citizens that propped up every kingdom.

"No, the focus should be at the end, about the way Father treated the defeated kings! They were his enemies, but they hadn't done anything to make him or Germa _need_ to attack. They were just in his way and it wasn't that hard, so he trampled over them and then shoved their weakness in their faces when they lost. Even when they begged for mercy, he didn't give them or their kingdoms any. He thought they didn't deserve to be kings, but he didn't even treat them like defeated enemies, even though he's always yelling at us about 'having honor'!

"They'd already lost and he just went and humiliated them more, just because he could; that's not 'honor', no way. And the citizens of the conquered kingdoms were even more innocent, so what happened to them was even more unfair! Most of them had never enlisted, so they weren't expecting to see battle at all. It just… it just wasn't fair! They didn't deserve any of what happened. They couldn't have _won_ , anyway, and everyone pretty much knew it after a week into the siege. What Father did was just… being mean to be mean, and show he had power everybody already knew about," Sanji argued indignantly, with a poorly parodied mimicry of Judge's lecturing holler.

He was also upside-down. That, however, was because he'd gotten it into his head to try out a handstand one of the servants had shown him the other day—not because he was flopped backwards over a cushion like his second-oldest brother.

Sanji was cripplingly compassionate, in an extension of his sensitivity since birth. Sometimes that meant he took things too personally, especially the caustic words of his younger sibling, but mostly it meant he was considerate and kind to a fault. The training and their father's encouragement that they hurt each other until they stopped feeling anything horrified him; he didn't like hurting anyone, least of all his own family, although he was fine with casual sparring, which they could all easily take.

She made sure that he understood his inability to set aside his emotions in a fight wasn't a bad thing, but something to be celebrated; that it was never wrong to want to help someone; and that he was who he was for a reason, and pretending to be somebody else wasn't sustainable or going to truly satisfy him. He cared about everyone, regardless of how well he knew them, and was easily the one who took to Reiju's improvised moral teachings the best.

"Well, there's also the sheer historical value, isn't there? Father says it was prime example of continuing the Vinsmoke heritage of military might, and an addition to the worldwide reputation of Germa 66's prowess. There's lots of respect you have to give to a kingdom who could utterly subjugate four larger ones in so short of a time period, with so few losses. Even now it's a point of pride for Germa citizens. What a royal should live up to—conflict and conquering and acclaim. All the Germa 66 soldiers who fought the campaign remember it personally. We come from a lineage of powerful rulers, and that's how they act," Yonji chimed in with careful pronunciation.

Some of the words he was clearly digging up from memory, and not internalized understanding. His voice had to carry a bit, from its starting point of him sprawled across a fluffier patch of carpet, just out of reach. It was close to the cracked-open window, where the occasional sea breeze breathed in, lightly ruffling the tips of his hair.

Yonji craved validation. The baseline weakest, but second only to Ichiji (and Reiju) in terms of drive to get stronger, he was the one who most deeply desired their father's praise and approval, out of an early inferiority complex. Power struggles didn't interest him, but he looked up to Ichiji and disdained Sanji's pacifistic tendencies the most, although his pessimistic grumblings and frequent sarcastic jabs weren't limited from anyone, even her.

She made sure that he understood his idol was flawed and his attentions, dangerous; that it was okay to want to prove yourself, but resenting others stronger or bullying others weaker was not the way to go about it; that striving to meet Judge's standards wasn't worth stripping away your soul. He cared for those he knew personally, and while reluctant to admit it even to himself, considered those who were close to them.

"Father says, Father says," Ichiji mocked. "What do _you_ ever say that he hasn't said first, Yon-Yon?"

"Sh- Shut up!" Flushing as red as his opponent's hair, the green-haired prince balled up his hands into fists, but didn't quite dare to raise them. It wasn't a serious threat, anyway, just a response of embarrassment. "I'm just trying to see things from his perspective!"

"You're the only one who actually listens to him when he monologues at us about how much of a disappointment we are," Niji pointed out, proving it was indeed possible to simultaneously speak sardonically, roll one's eyes, and play-wrestle.

"You're also always defending him, so 'trying his perspective' doesn't mean anything," Ichiji added, while trying to force Niji off of him. The air around his immediate vicinity began gently wavering as light beams bent oddly.

"I'm not always defending him!"

"Are too!"

"You kinda are," Niji chipped in. Static-level electricity was crackling sporadically around him.

"Yeah, sorry." Sanji shrugged in agreement, blasé even as he leaned away from the sparks flying nearby. "You totally do."

The 'compound color combo' was super effective.

Yonji staggered back, betrayed, and folded down to sulk.

"That's 'cause you're always criticizing him or something and it's just, it's just- it's not fair either. He might not be the best father, or- or king at times, but he's a genius scientist and a great commander and super strong warrior and I just think we should give him of the respect he deserves, is all. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying I'm going to start ratting out anything to him, like how we know about Mother and her wishes or stuff like Sanji's weird cooking hobby and how we pretend to agree about all that royal-attitude talk. I'm not a snitch. But it sucks knowing I _can't_ tell him that stuff without getting us all in trouble. It's like… he's- he's still our father. He knows what he's talking about, at least a little. Shouldn't… we listen to him?" the boy finished quietly, miserably struggling to explain away his own feelings.

The redhead paused at that, lacking a swift retort in the face of uncharacteristic vulnerability. The general rule with the quadruplets were that feelings were gross and icky and should only be talked about under duress or Reiju—who was pretty much the only one enforcing such duress, anyway. Niji glanced over at a silent Ichiji, their fighting briefly put on hold, and gained a troubled look of his own. Having a conflicted stance on Judge wasn't a unique dilemma among them.

Collapsing his handstand, and rubbing at sore arms, the generally agreed 'feelings freak'—an affectionate term, except when another brother was irked at him—entered the fray. With a sour glare at the wall, Sanji's cut-in was unsympathetic. "So? Is how he acts the way a father would? If it is, I don't think I want one. And words only mean what you let them. That's what Reiju-nee always says, right?"

There was a distinct tone of 'so _there_ '. Four attentive little faces all expectantly craned her way with glittering, hopeful eyes. They wanted her to settle the argument—a not uncommon course of action, when it came to all five siblings interacting for an extended period of time outside of Judge-supervised training.

Usually, she left them to talk things out naturally, only intervening when the topic swerved wildly off-course. Either she'd be the deciding vote...

"I can't make that choice for you," Reiju replied reluctantly.

... or she'd utterly abstain, in the interests of slipping in a life lesson and letting them form their own opinions.

Reiju was careful to censor all uncertainty from her voice. It was still her wish for the four to develop into their persons by looking underneath the underneath of their own volition. Sometimes, she almost wondered if this strange swirl of what she deemed sibling affection was actually closer to what she imagined jounin sensei felt towards their genin cells. The desire to protect and guide and establish a reliable presence, but not to lead by the nose for fear they'd grow _too_ dependent. "Your feelings are your own, and might not always make sense, and that includes your feelings about the king."

"Yeah, but you never call him father, it's always 'the king' or something with you," Yonji muttered insolently, determined to have the last word like the brattiest brat who ever bratted that he was.

Reiju pursed her lips and stared at him disapprovingly. _No, this is all sibling emotion right here._ She wasn't taking his sass as a seven-year-old. It'd only been cute up until the quadruplets turned four, and even then it's endearing quality had begun to be called into doubt. She _would_ smack him over the head, but Sakura had a track record of that never working for long. And anyway, Yonji had learned by now to avoid easy arms' reach.

"Sanji. Please." She didn't need to add anything more to that monotone request. It was as good as a command.

Sanji, who was currently closest to Yonji, obligingly reached over and tickled his ribs, until the sullen boy submitted from helpless, squirming laughter.

"Ichi, Ni," she reprimanded next, with their childhood nicknames and a severe look. They knew better that to tussle too fiercely in her bedroom of breakable furniture, and they knew that _she_ knew they knew better, so the red-blue duo merely dipped their heads sheepishly in surrender.

"San!" the sole blond of the group chimed in cheekily, although the shade was abnormally bright enough that the accurate label was just 'yellow'.

The youngest groaned. "That joke got old, like, eight years ago. As in _before we were ever born_ , it was already old. Congratulations, dork."

His third-oldest brother scowled and kicked at him, which he dodged. "Buzzkill. You never let any of us have our moments. You always have to ruin the mood."

"There was no mood to ruin!" the other shot back, visibly contemplating kicking him back.

She smiled fondly at their bickering. She was proud of them.

Sure, sometimes things came too close to actual resentment. And there'd been that brief bout of picking on Yonji for his weaker enhancements, and to a lesser extent, on Sanji for his stronger empathy; it had veered dangerously near harassment, until she'd stomped her foot down to stamp the bullying out of Ichiji and Niji. Literally _and_ verbally.

(Reiju was well-versed by now at simultaneously carrying on physical and verbal beatdowns. She had the best example of the technique to reference from memory, after all. Even it if it was a past life's memory.)

And, yes, well. It was true that, every so often, she couldn't quite stop herself from… speculating. On how much of the brothers' dynamic and personalities were actually shaped by the common enemy in their lives—Judge, the ever-disappointed, oppressive presence looming over their heads. How much harder would it have been to temper her brothers' most negative attitude traits through her own force of will, had it not been for Judge's self-sabotage? His sincere efforts to squash any shred of self-esteem the 'failures' had, much less any budding superhuman superiority complexes, had succeeded fantastically in undermining any credence his preachings about emotional sterility and 'might makes right' may have once carried. (Well, except Yonji.)

Nothing the 'failures' did were ever going to be enough for him to accept them; his disdain was too far etched into his very being now. With that in mind, the boys were under less psychological pressure to truly try and conform to the man's expectations. Having learned by now that such standards were impossible to begin with, and that no success would be rewarded anyway, (almost) collective hatred was quick to be followed by a lessened respect for his authority. Consistently being grouped together under such a discriminatory label as 'failures' had reinforced her explanations on siblings sticking together and sticking up for one another.

…But still. _Overall,_ she rather thought that she'd done a good job so far, half-raising a gaggle of Vinsmokes. They were going to grow up into decent humans, in spite of Judge's efforts. Reiju felt… proud. _Is this those jounin sensei vibes again or hospital intern manager vibes…?_ It was nice to see her efforts hadn't been for nought.

That pleasant warm feeling didn't stop her from clearing her throat with another meaningful _look_ , to break up a second fight-in-the-making.

Yonji settled down, but didn't apologize. Sanji quieted, and sensibly scooted closer to her and away from his little brother, casting her an appealing glance that silently blamed the greenette for instigating it.

All was peaceful. For a moment.

And then the older pair began softly snickering at the how they'd gotten called out.

The third and fourth puffed up in slighted response, unwilling to take the smug teasing.

Reiju sighed, and tilted her head back in despair. Kids. Worse, prepubescent brothers practically the same age.

"Right," she announced loudly, bracingly. It halted everyone in their tracks. "Story time's over for today. Now, you can either brawl in here and face the consequences for breaking my things, or we can take this to the training fields, and placate the king's insatiable need to see us beating each other up."

Reiju cocked a hip and smirked, raising her loosely curled left fist in a playful kind of taunt. "Who wants their weekly taste of humble pie?"

Ichiji's eyes gleamed. He needed no more to be said. Niji perked up and swept his eyes around their circle. He was sizing up their conditions—no fighting in the room still left a loophole of distractions for the race to the fields, and no doubt he was already prioritizing. Sanji gulped and put up both hands in an equally playful plea. He had, however, already instinctively shifted his stance for better attack footing.

(Reiju was pleased to note he'd taken her earlier advice on looking into specializing more on his kicks than his punches.)

Yonji hesitated. He was torn between the desire for his father's recognition and the discouragement he felt at their skill gap. Silly him, assuming he actually had a choice in a sibling brawl.

"Great!" Their big sister smiled and clapped her hands together. "The usual rules, whoever I see the most improvement from gets to pick their seat the next time we dock and go to town in the Cat Carriage, and the least improved has to feed the Mouse Cart. Let's go!"

 **.**

 **Sakura!Reiju Part 9:**

 **Storytime**

 **.**

 _Delete:_

 _Soon enough, the quadruplets were old enough to realize that their family structure wasn't like others'. That the mythical 'mother' wasn't just a figure in fairy tales._

 _Even so, they must have been thinking on it for a while. When they sprang the questions on her, it was a concerted effort, and clearly rehearsed beforehand._

" _Do we have a mother?" Sanji wanted to know, blinking—was he trying to bat them?—big blue eyes._

" _Who is Mother?" Niji demanded._

" _Where is Mother?" Yonji whined._

" _Is Mother dead?" Ichiji bluntly drawled._

 _(The others glared at him for that. It was evidently a controversial opinion.)_

 _She'd been expecting this._

 _Vinsmoke Reiju sat her brothers down and told them about the kindest and gentlest person she knew in this world. And then she confirmed that, yes, they may not have a mother around anymore, but explained that this was all the more reason to stay loyal to each other._

" _We're brothers and sister. Siblings. …comrades. That means something. And if there's one thing I've learned from a man far greater than he thought of himself, it's that you don't betray comrades and you never leave them behind."_

* * *

 **A/N: In summary: Judge doted on the 'emotionless superhuman' children, who followed him in cruelly abusing 'normal emotional' Sanji for being different. So when** _ **all**_ **his sons are 'partial failures/successes'…**

 **B3 ending edited. This is end of significantly prewritten content. Reviewers seem to want more Perona after Bonney…?**


	27. Bo1: refresh

**.**

 **-Bo-**

 **.**

Now. It had to be now. She'd waited too long to plan already. If she was going to escape—and she _was_ —then this would be the best opportunity she'd get for a while. Today was the last dose of her 'prep' regime; tomorrow, the actual ingestion of the accursed fruit was scheduled.

Even with her stomach churning from the pills, she wasn't too worried about staying 'herself'. The scientists had only anticipated so many years of memories. And why would they suspect otherwise? From the moment she'd been aware of this body's situation, she'd played the perfect part to lower their guards.

With her sense of identity mostly secured, she supposed she _could_ wait a little longer. Wait out the full effects of the culminating dose, then strike immediately after ingestion when truly nobody would expect an escape. …but then the guards would be back on the ship, and the scientists were sure to increase monitoring. And to top it all off, she was unsure how _specifically_ the drugs would affect her after the final 'catalyst' ran its course, despite her confidence in her immunity to being _overall_ affected.

Even if the 'ability' she'd eavesdropped on the scientists discussing wound up giving her enough of an edge to succeed in overpowering any obstacles, she'd still be in the middle of a sea that would be toxic to the touch. With her woefully underdeveloped, chakraless body as it was, she'd then be either stuck on a ship she didn't know how to steer, or on a dinghy chased by a ship with ranged weaponry. To call both situations 'strategically suboptimal' was a massive understatement.

Better to run now, unnoticed, then, and _choose_ a land mass to strand herself on. A life's experience had greatly impressed upon her the importance of free will. _This_ life's short experience so far had only emphasized it.

Considering the timing, she was basing her expectations of a low-priority recapture off of faking her death and the loss of the fruit. She was aiming for ambiguity, at least. One condition or both, to hear the scientists speak of it when they thought she couldn't hear, would essentially render her insignificant. Only the confirmed loss of the latter would call off a hunt for the fruit, however.

Which was why spite was making her steal it away as she went.

She'd done many things in the secret cause of spite, most of which had made her a better person and stronger comrade in the end. Stealing from an influential foreign government was nothing. Many people, whose opinions she valued highly, would likely approve of the circumstances; this understanding only served as further encouragement to implement her plan now.

Another turn of her digestive system reminded her of the internal time limit she was working under, although she should theoretically be safe until she fell asleep. The scientists had dumbed down their explanation of why she needed to fully relax her mental barriers to allow the drugs to take effect, boosted in potency by the build-up of other doses prior fed into her system.

Shortly after, they'd left her alone for 'naptime' in the cell, with one of them complaining to another as they proceeded down a hallway.

"Why are _we_ forced to stay behind on an empty ship, when we're the ones doing all the work here? What, do we really need big scary Marines to protect us from the fearsome menace of a little girl? We could be having drinks on firm ground again right now. It's psychological torture, only being able to glimpse the town from the horizon."

The other had replied curtly, voice gradually fading, "Go ahead, try airing those complaints of yours to the captain when we see him again about being excluded from shore leave. You know, the ones about the security precautions? I'd love to watch you try and explain how _else_ the Marines—who, by the way, _run_ this shitty ship—can both have their shore leave, and not be to blame if we dock and then have a valuable Devil Fruit stolen because some rookie couldn't handle their liquor and let the whole town know what we're carrying. It'd be the most entertainment I'll get around here until the brat actually starts being interesting. Which is… oh, right! _Tomorrow!_ So kindly fuck off until the morning, when we _have_ to see each other again for our paid job. I don't know why you still insist on thinking we're frien-"

That was a few minutes ago.

Deemed 'not a flight risk', her cell was unlocked. If she were actually a child, perhaps that and the carefully censored treatment she'd faced since being taken onboard would've convinced her that she wasn't even captive.

Or maybe it just would've taken longer for this body's soul to realize.

The next steps, she'd mapped out so often in her head that it was almost like watching somebody else move her body for her. She barely had to think about uncapping the pickpocketed pen and writing a long list down the inside of her non-dominant arm's elbow. The door slipped open silently at a push, like she knew it would. As anticipated, nobody was in the hallways between her furnished cell and the laboratory area.

Right now, there should be one, maybe two scientists at the ship's wheel (her mind itched to learn the correct terms but she didn't have _time_ -); perhaps one scientist wandering the halls en route to another location; perhaps another, excessively dutiful scientists checking miscellaneous equipment in the laboratory; and the rest relaxing in either the kitchens or their living quarters. Her mental map of the ship was shakier, having been restricted to a certain area of the ship for the most part; still, she sought to avoid all of them. No witnesses would make it more confusing for anyone to figure out what happened. Though, if push came to shove… she hadn't forgotten any of her anatomy training, taught once to heal and twice to break. This body should be more than up to incapacitating a single untrained adult, if given the advantage of surprise.

The laboratory was empty. She hesitated to think of things as going in her favor just yet. However, if her breathing wasn't already consciously regulated for steadiness, she would've breathed a little easier after finding the experimental fruit already innocuously laid out on a counter for her. Some lazy scientist had just made her day by deciding to prepare materials for the morning's next phase.

A blade was easy to find; one suitable to cut through hairs was harder, but still doable. There were no pockets in her given clothes, which resembled a sturdier hospital shift; she made do by using a roll of medical tape to attach the fruit, as many chunks of hair as possible, a box of matchsticks, and a clean lancet to herself. If she had more time, she'd bleach her hair—she'd outgrown being embarrassed by its attention-catching visibility, but not its attention-catching visibility in and of itself—but it was only a matter of time until someone found her missing. Granted, it could be a matter of _hours_ —bored disgruntlement appeared to be a common opinion of the scientists—but she preferred to get out fast.

Her lock-picking expertise was rustier than her anatomy. Frustration warring with a need for discretion, she compromised by trying to smash the glass cabinet very _quietly_. With luck, distance from the other occupants would dim the disturbance enough to avoid notice. Briskly albeit carefully, she grabbed all the flammable chemicals she recognized, setting the bottles down just outside the open door. The hallway was still empty, and no footsteps sounded.

Ignoring almost all rules of laboratory safety, she then tied a cloth around her face, held her breath, and uncapped and threw all the bottles of chemicals she _didn't_ recognize at the floor as far away from her—and the door—as possible. Scurrying blindly to the door, when she looked back, the puddle had already begun burning and spreading rapidly. She slammed the thin metal door shut after throwing a lit match inside. The records room was right next door, and the walls were flimsy. Hastily, she opened the cabinets, grabbed fistfuls of files to throw to the floor, and then simply dropped a few more lit matches onto the pile of paper.

Scooping up armfuls of the recognized chemicals, she half-ran to her last location, and half-'emptied-bottles-along-the-way-to-leave-a-dangerously-flammable-trail-of-liquid-splashed-everywhere'. To cover more of the wooden ship, and also to avoid faintly approaching footsteps, she took the long way around. When her hands were sufficiently free, matches were struck and then flicked behind her at generous intervals. The empty bottles were thrown out of open portholes as she came across them, landing in the sea. She ran out of bottles a good thirty seconds before she ran into the room she'd been looking for and shoved the door shut behind her. For good measure, she found a few heavy barrels to stack in front of it. It looked like her strength and conditioning routine was working, even if she'd been forced to cut back significantly since trapped on this ship.

The room seemed to stock spare supplies. Rope, tarp, a knife with which to cut the rope and tarp, empty crates, and the like. There were also five emergency evacuation boats, all with oars and crude motors—just as she remembered, from her first look at them, passing the room on her way on board. Almost serenely, she followed her envisioned plans, tracking her own movements inside her head as she dragged a tarp over every boat. After securing them very loosely with rope, she next dragged the boats up to a closed door, when, once opened, revealed a short walkway that jutted out from the side of the ship. Seawater shallowly sloshed in with every gentle sway of the ship.

Ankles damp, but still working with determined efficiency, she picked out two boats at the end of the rough line-up. Her lancet saw use here; after slicing open her palm to smear some blood around the bottom of one ship, it sliced open the tape securing her hacked-off hair, which also went towards that same ship. As she worked, a flaming section of 'roof' fell close to her, forcing her to dodge on instinct. The following wave of seawater entering doused it to cinders.

She sliced the rest of the medical tape off of her skin and clothing, to be thrown into the ocean. The box of matches, she kept gripped in her teeth, safe from water or a sudden rocking motion. The fruit, she sliced off a fraction to be added to the blood-stained boat, and then re-tied it to her stomach with the stronger rope, using her best knotwork. After a beat, the lancet was tossed inside the red herring dinghy as well, before she finally messily roped its tarp shut again.

This would all be so much easier with clones, or water-walking, or sealing scrolls… but in the absence of chakra or even a mature, trained body, she had only her smarts. Thankfully, she was used to being designated 'the smart one'. The designation had slowly become a point of pride over the years, something to live up to—and she hoped sincerely that what she was doing now was indeed living up to it, and not actually the first step in a series of cascading mistakes.

She didn't hesitate before pushing all the other emergency dinghys out to sea, already lit up and slowly burning, motors running at full blast. (These motors were so crude, and the fuel so limited, she estimated they'd run themselves out in a couple of hours at maximum.) None of the people on the ship were good people. Or even particularly good scientists, really. She'd already decided that the extent of her mercy was not ambushing them to kill; it wasn't her obligation to leave a convenient escape route from the fiery deathtrap she'd set as well. If they really wanted to leave, they'd find a way.

Shouts were echoing distantly from above. The fires had no doubt been discovered by now. Time to go.

It took but a few seconds to turn on the motor of the second-to-last boat—bearing the 'set-up'—and push it out to sea. It took but a few seconds more to jump onto the last boat as it floated onto the ocean, start the motor, point it in a vague direction she remembered watching land pass by a day ago from her cell's porthole, and slip underneath the tarp.

She sucked in a breath, then exhaled in a burst. Her limbs were trembling from unusual exhaustion. Or maybe relief. If she'd calculated all this right… this should be enough to start over.

Again.

Despite all the uncertainty that still laid ahead, Sakura smiled triumphantly underneath the tarp. If she could've been sure that nobody was watching her particular boat from the ship right then, then she would've pumped a fist. Instead, she settled for whispering, quietly but viciously, " _Shannarou!"_

The ship burned behind her.

.

.

 **[Simplified Experimental Design Overview: Experiment —**

 **Objective:** Replicating the effects of the Op-Op Fruit's ultimate technique, the _Perennial Youth Operation_ , on a much more limited scale.

 **Background:** Eternal youth is an attractive prospect to many people of influence. World Nobles and the World Government have long expressed interest in acquiring a method of it[1], and were much disappointed by the recent loss of the Op-Op Fruit[2]. However, the resurfacing of the Age-Age Fruit offered the rare opportunity to attempt to mimic an alternative. Though not much had been documented of the previous user's abilities[3], there was still enough evidence to conclude that the fruit was a Paramecia-type that bestowed external age manipulation[4]. **[truncated for length]**

 **Hypothesis:** If a malleable subject is trained to be a completely loyal agent of the World Government wielding the Age-Age Fruit, then the stated objective will be eventually accomplished with associated Devil Fruit limitations*.

 ***Theorized possible limitations of the Age-Age Fruit's external age manipulation: A reversal of the ability when the user is unconscious; the affected target will 'revert' once outside of a certain range of the user; the user must actively concentrate on maintaining the effect; the user … [truncated for length] .**

 **Procedure: —CENSORED [truncated for length] —**

 **Note(s):**

\- Vegapunk has refused involvement in the project, citing a moral conflict with working with child subjects[29]. Thus, the decision[30] to use an alternative method[31] to the Pacifista loyalty operations.

 _ **\- Subject #01, "Jewelry Bonney", escaped Marine custody on September 1st, XXXX. Current status unknown. It is unconfirmed whether she escaped with possession of the Age-Age Fruit, or the Fruit was lost to the ocean in the aftermath of the incident. {See attached 'Incident Report #DFE713' for further detail.}**_ **]**

…

…

…

 **[Incident Report #DFE713:**

 **Filer: Marine Captain Cirrus**

 **Location: South Blue, coordinates —°—'—"X***

 **Time and Date: Estimated to be September 1st, XXXX, with a margin of error of a day.**

 ***note to self, edit this when the scientists we fished out of the water wake up, they're the only goddamn witnesses**

 **Personal Observations: Answering a Marine-registered Den Den distress call, my crew and I arrived in the area on September 2nd, XXXX, at 7:31 a.m. We found several scientists treading water and clinging to broken-off, burnt pieces of the-]**

Before he wrote any more, Cirrus contemplated his pen with dawning dismay. HQ was really not going to like his report. And he was not going to like the consequences of HQ not liking his report, in all likelihood.

How could he dress up " _the subject and the fruit were long gone and the ship burnt beyond salvageability while the assigned marines were found still twiddling their thumbs on shore leave miles away, wondering why their ship hadn't come to pick them up as arranged"_ without looking like a damn fool? Or at least without making it sound like, " _somehow a_ _child_ _managed to take advantage of the marines' land leave and government scientists' negligence to escape without trace"_.

His only comfort was that whatever consequences came his way for being unlucky enough to be first responder to the call, they would be more than doubled on the head of the captain in charge of the actual ship.

…He cast a glance at the scarred, sorry excuse for a ship drifting a ways over from where his crew had anchored. The rescue boats he'd sent out had returned hours ago with the report of no more survivors, and an inside too chaotically marred by flame to clearly tell what had happened. Too scoured by fire, or too waterlogged, or too smashed-up by the way the levels had crumbled.

Cirrus shook his head. _Not that there's much ship left for the poor sap to be in charge of anymore, even if Marineford doesn't decide to strip 'im of all his titles._

He couldn't even order a proper search for the subject, who was their best lead for the Age-Age Fruit. There were too many islands nearby and not enough immediate man- or ship-power on his hands. The weather had been good the past few days; if the subject had taken a prototype motorboat, she could've made it pretty far on relatively smooth seas.

And that was without mentioning the possibility of an undocumented ship simply passing by the area and picking up valuable Devil Fruit… with a child coming along for the ride.

A knock came on his office door.

"Come in," he called, head looking up from where he'd cradled it in his hands. He was getting a preemptive headache from the paperwork.

"Sir? There's a boat spotted by telescope…"

Cirrus perked up, hopeful. "Pursue it." They'd gotten all they could get from the shipwreck at this rate, better to just leave it and let it be reclaimed by the sea.

It was the first of _several_ boats.

.

.

.

Sakura surfaced to consciousness. Slowly at first, then all at once.

The full force of reality hit her like a punch to the gut. One of _her_ punches. She found herself breathless and gasping for air, thoroughly disoriented. After a brief struggle with gravity and her own oddly weak limbs, she managed to flop over pathetically. Sakura spat up what felt like a gallon of seawater. It was probably objectively more like a few mouthfuls, to be fair—but to be equally fair, a single mouthful was more than enough for a born-and-bred Konoha-nin.

… _Water Release was different, alright? For starters, it's not this fucking salty!_

Her throat cleared enough to safely, if raspily, inhale and exhale. With the immediate threat of drowning on dry land over with, Sakura focused on identifying said dry land. Squinted eyes and gritty skin contact gave her a vague impression of lying on sand.

Was she on... a beach? Waves crashed in the background, and there was that taste of seawater she couldn't explain. How- How had she gotten to a beach? When had she crossed into Mizu...?

She groaned, feeling the sharp throb of a pounding headache. Trying to heal oneself while in a dazed mental state was high on the basic list of 'do not do's' for a medic. It was a familiar feeling, anyway, from late nights and early mornings of cramming for medical tests to meet Tsunade's high expectations. Her master had never set standards she didn't think she couldn't meet, but the blonde's faith in her younger apprentice had grown exponentially.

It was also a familiar feeling from having one too many celebratory rounds of 'hoorah we didn't die' drinks in the weeks immediately following the war, as everyone was juggling strange new tensions and renegotiated ways of life. One of the reasons she wasn't panicking—yet—about possibly having an amnesiac hangover on a beach that was probably in the Land of Water: the entire world remembered quite well the exploits of Team Seven, and knew better than to try and kill any of them. Not so much for what the attempted victim would retaliate with in return—although they'd all been respected as formidable in their own right by the end of Kaguya—but more so for what the _rest of them and everyone they knew_ would do to them in return.

Of course, the really scary S-ranks with the earnest suicidal desire to kill one of them and fuck the consequences wouldn't be deterred by that. But if someone really wanted her dead then she saw no reason why she'd be waking up right now, feeling like hell had broken open her head to let a few of the nastier demons crawl inside for a party. Also, Sakura wasn't Kakashi- or even Sai- or Sasuke-levels of paranoid. When she woke up with a hangover (?) she couldn't remember getting on a beach she hadn't ever been on, her first reaction wasn't to consider it a really weird set-up to an assassination. And she never wanted it to be.

(No, that was just her second reaction.)

…Something was tied tightly to her torso. Her vision cleared up enough after a few blinks for her to clearly grasp the intricate knotwork tying a rather large and unusual... dubiously fruit-like object to her belly, almost like some strange flotation device. Sakura gave herself a few moments to just stare, aghast and morbidly fascinated, at this scientific abomination of a fruit. Curly stem, strange symmetrical patterns… there was- okay, there _was_ a chance it was natural. She'd heard of stranger things from sources she trusted more often than not. And after the Hidden Villages had united to fight a rabbit goddess, she considered herself very open to even the most unexpected situations. But she'd never heard of, or read of, a fruit like this.

Not to be arrogant, but at the very least, it proved the fruit wasn't a historically used poison or cure for anything.

Sakura squinted again, this time not out of need, but of disbelief. What the— Her clothes seemed like a hospital shift. Did she somehow get too drunk to remember accelerated metabolization at some hospital party, and her colleagues decide to enlist help in a prank?

Eh, better than messing with her caffeine. If someone broke the coffee machine again, she was going to cry to Shizune, who could always be trusted to be sympathetic. And then she was going to make a lot of _other_ people cry that day.

Hm... the knotwork looked like one of her making, actually. Either that, or the ex-ANBU patient who'd taught her one of his personal trapwork techniques out of thanks for re-connecting two of his four limbs a few months ago had somehow been brought out of _permanent_ retirement for the purpose of... playing a prank on her?

She hoped not. Sage, did she hope not. (And wow, was it a little strange swearing by the Sage of Six Paths now that she knew the whole story behind it.) There was enough revival troubles even following the war's conclusion that it was actually possible, although entirely improbable. A continuing trend, she was beginning to see. And not a trend she thought she _wanted_ to see.

The sky was oddly clear for a day in the Land of Water. No mist, and not even a cloud in sight, much less a darkened one. Sakura noticed this particular detail, because the bright sun appeared intent on a. baking her alive where she lay coated in a fine layer of — she warily teased at her lips with the tip of her tongue — _more_ salt, fan- _tastic_ and b. exacerbating her headache.

 _Maybe it's Wave, then…?_

Irritated now with her sluggish responses and difficulty of keeping to one train of thought, Sakura decided to ignore the fruit-thing for now. She deemed herself mentally recovered enough to heal her headache now; she tried not to think about what Tsunade—the raging hypocrite—would do to her if she ever found out how frequently she healed while hungover. Instead, she reached up to touch her temple, absently summoning up the comforting sensation of medical chakra—

Sakura sent an alarmed look at her hand. Her fingers flexed, and still no cool green-ish glow sprang into sudden existence. Through the throb of her migraine—a pain easily ignored through force of will now that she had more pressing concerns—she tried again and again, with mounting urgency, to muster a flicker of chakra. Any chakra. Even her brief attempts at meditation failed.

Eventually she had to face the facts. Despite her deep desire to deny them.

She couldn't access her chakra.

Curiously, she didn't feel cold from a lack of it, which was usually a sign of standard chakra suppression devices. Her body still felt internal warmth. It just felt... different. … _Her entire chakra system was gone and replaced._

Only a few minutes had passed since she first woke up. Before Sakura could blow the lid on her temper upon fully processing some other unpleasant realities—such as the realization that her hair was wrong, her limbs resized, and what she could feel of her face was foreign—her gaze caught on some scribbles on what she was starting to think _wasn't_ her arm.

(A mixture of the headache, initially blurred vision, and the proportionately resized distance between these eyes and this body was to blame for her failure to grasp this admittedly _ridiculous_ situation faster. Still, she found herself a little disappointed at her smarts. Her self-esteem no longer started and ended at her beauty and her brains, but the latter had still become a core part of her identity and the base of her skills as a ninja. Control was nothing without knowing how to use it.)

It was her handwriting. Or a very good mimicry of it. Just like that was her knotwork. Water-resistant ink was a familiar concept, although considering the chemical recipe and the chakra-infusion alternative, it was usually only used in expensive equipment for those working with seals or highly sensitive missives near large quantities of water or humidity.

Like say... Mizu?

Her sneaking suspicion that she wasn't even there, however, was confirmed by the first item of the hastily scribbled list in a personally created code on the inner side of her arm.

Well, fine. The third. The first item was her ninja ID, and the second, what appeared to intend to be a self-identifying confirmation phrase. If so, it was effective. Whoever wrote this was either herself, desperately trying to gain her own trust—or they knew so much about her that she wasn't going to find any proof to the contrary. That way laid madness of the sort that only those already mad from suspicion and managing to function nevertheless could handle. As earlier affirmed, she wasn't going to be one of those.

 **[ 012601 - different/wrong world - no chakra - don't worry/concern about memory - enemy/target: world ruler/government - compromised alias/identity: Jewelry Bonney - consume secured - fruit ability - hide reconnaissance - alone/no-extraction new live/life ]**

So her only other option, really, was to trust that this _was_ herself.

…Sakura controlled her breathing. Like she'd been taught for high-stress combat situations. Or high-stakes surgery. She would stay calm now, and then calmly scream into a pillow the moment she could find one. Or into the sky. She wasn't picky.

But later. Now was the time for calm. Calm and… fruit-eating.

She eyed the fruit with a grimace. Despite her visible reluctance, her fingers were already picking apart the tangled web of rope with the ease of long practice. Picking up the fruit in one hand, she could feel the heft of its weight.

"Well, if I can't even trust _myself_ now… who _can_ I trust?" Sakura murmured thoughtfully to herself, giving the fruit a narrow-eyed look of consideration. She snorted. "Naruto to be Naruto. And Kakashi to be Kakashi, and Tsunade to be Tsunade, and Ino-"

To take her mind off the hesitantly-acknowledged 'fact' that she would never see her precious people again, or even her comfortably-familiar people, Sakura bit decisively into the fruit. Which already had a shallow slice taken out of it for some reason.

In the next moment, she had no room in her mind to theorize where the slice had gone, because it was entirely filled with visceral disgust and mental gagging at the nauseating, odious, _indescribably-awful_ flavor. Eyes watering, and feeling as though this experience truly ranked up there with fighting two wars as one of her greatest test of wills ever, she forced it down.

Sakura sized up the rest of the fruit-flesh with dismay. She sincerely hoped she didn't need to eat the _entire_ fruit to get these… this 'fruit ability'. She also sincerely cursed her past self for not specifying, because now she was going to have to take the goddamn plunge, now wasn't she?

If she could have, she would've forgotten in a _heartbeat_ the entirety of the ensuing minutes of struggle to swallow the rest of the fruit in as few bites as possible, touching as little of her tongue or throat as possible. The closest approximation she could think of to the truly wretched taste was if the under-claw residue from Kakashi's dog pack after a long tracking mission was scraped into a trash compactor, along with Naruto's post-battle sweat after having not showered for a week while traveling, along with the unidentifiable bodily-fluids crust scraped from the bottom of the forensics hazardous material bin. And then was fed to a pig, whose resultant fecal matter was fed to another pig, and so on, until one of them vomited.

That vomit was then compressed into a deceptively pretty package of swirls.

Sakura had tasted _poisons_ , literal _poisons_ , that had tasted better. She was almost longing to return to her days of building up basic poisons resistances right now.

As she seriously considered stuffing a handful of sand or just straight-up drinking a mouthful of seawater to scrub the lingering fruit's essence from her taste buds, she suddenly realized she didn't feel any different. No noticeable sign of this mysterious 'fruit ability'.

Of course, the very moment Sakura thought this, an odd tingle ran up her spine. And then shivered throughout her body. Before she could concentrate on figuring out what that meant, precisely, she was distracted by approaching presences. Though she was without chakra, she could sense that much as a ninja more experienced than her age suggested.

Part of her argued she should stand up, get in a neutral or dominant position from which to speak from. Another part of her argued that she was still tired, still confused, still having a hell of a headache, and also still looked like a child. And not even _her_ as a child, but some other poor sucker with pink hair as a child, judging by the bangs falling just into her vision.

Three- no, four things happened at once, in the next breath.

A bristling wall of mechanical-looking spears greeted her from the covering foliage of the treeline, where the sand gave way to grass. Squat, Kumo-dark faces with unusual features accompanied them in poking out of the leaves. A single spokeperson poked their head out further—Sakura hazily assumed for now that they were male, by their thick mustache—revealing a string necklace of stones and bare shoulders. His language was extremely oddly accented, but entirely understandable. "Who're you! Why you come here?"

One enormous bird, and then another, circled above, screeching. To say they had exotic plumage was a gross understatement; to say that they were nearing boss-leel summons-size was not. At their raucous, and somehow very expressively interrogatory, "Caw! Caw!", a third of the spears shifted direction to point upwards, and the spokesman accused loudly, "You in cahoots with da birds!?"

Sakura wished _very hard_ that she was back in what she'd spent a literal lifetime thinking of as _her_ body, both chakra-ful and teenaged.

And suddenly, one of those wishes came true.

"And now even my _clothes don't fit!?"_ Sakura screamed at the sky. This was screamed with the soul-deep exhaustion of someone who was having a very bad morning without coffee, but still, quite karmically unfairly, with a hangover-like headache.

She then had to jump to her feet to avoid both the wave of spears and the beaked dive-bombing from the natives and the giant birds, whom she'd startled with her sudden shout.

It was just one of those days.

 **.**

 **Sakura!Bonney: Part 1**

 **Refresh**

* * *

 **A/N: All we know of Bonney's past is she's escaped the world government's control before. Instead of glossing it over (like I did for S!Coby), I made up some hand-wavy background, which… sort of grew out of hand. It won't specifically come up again, rest assured. For those interested, I also researched a placeholder Japanese name for Bonney's canonically unnamed Devil Fruit, to go along with the placeholder English 'Age-Age Fruit': Oiru Oiru no Mi, using** **老いる** **, the intransitive verb for 'to age'. Also: guess the island?**

 **Some Japanese and English synonyms will be used interchangeably from now on. Unsatisfied with this chapter's overgrown length, but if I stop to overthink more I'm afraid I'll get stuck again.**


	28. Bo2: diplomacy

**.**

 **-Bo-**

 **.**

Torino Island. That was this place's name. Where "birds rule", huh?

Well, not anymore.

Though the first week or so of her involuntary stranding on the island had been an exhausting learning experience for everyone, it was eventually established that Sakura meant neither the natives nor the giant birds any harm; that the birds were at least summons-level sapient, although unable to verbally communicate; and that the native humans were experiencing frustrations with said birds over unspecified extremely vital resources they were hoarding on the massive central tree.

So, she solved the latter through means of the middle in order to increase the favorable relationship of the former.

That was simplifying things, of course. Sakura wasn't lying to herself when she thought of her first week as an exhausting learning experience. The immediate adjustment period was physically, emotionally, mentally exhausting all around. But they did learn.

In the very first threeway 'chase' initiated by her scream of rage to the uncaring sky, there had been no less than seven counts of her own body—which had taken about a week anyway to even comfortably default to thinking of as 'hers'—suddenly shifting shape, sometimes subtly and sometimes significantly; five counts of her landbound pursuers experiencing similar troubles—which at first they had loudly accused her of 'cursing' them with; and three counts of her winged pursuers undergoing the same.

Needless to say, it had put a damper on the hysterical affair. There's just something about a giant bird shrinking to a chick, and subsequently falling out of the sky to crash-land on a heap of panicking humans, that stuns a mob in place.

It didn't help that the chick was still bigger than all of the humans gathered… including Sakura in teenaged form. Or that the remaining giant bird then screeched frantically, swooped down, and carried off the chick without looking back. Well, no, the birds deserting the hunt actually helped matters quite a lot; shortly afterwards, the short tanned humans—whose weird get-ups she vaguely processed in a corner of her mind that _wasn't_ desperately trying to stop her physical fluctuations—were convinced enough that she _wasn't_ a bird-ally to then hold a civil conversation.

Unfortunately, seeing as Sakura had taken the distraction as an opportunity to stealthily slip away, that conversation had to wait until the second day. The first night was spent lonely and cold in a tree, whose bark felt too different from a Konoha native specimen for her to delude herself. The broad tree leaves she'd scrounged up and knotted together by the stems to cover her torn clothing felt as ridiculous as they looked. Sleep was fitful. She switched unpredictably from teenage to child to—most confusingly, as she didn't remember being that old—adult, then back again.

The second morning found her hungry enough to risk foraging hostile terrain for recognizable edibles. Sakura had been in the middle of cursing a cluster of bushes for having any safe, _normal_ -looking berries when she'd felt the natives' approach. Her decision to try diplomacy over wilderness survival in a wilderness that none of her knowledge could have prepared her for was met by spear-point. Again.

It was roughly what she expected for ninja interpretation of 'civil conversation' anyway. The ones who didn't prefer more subtle mind-games, that was.

Sakura did manage to establish on the second day that she was a severely lost traveler with no home to go back to. Also, a medic. Also, not 'cursed' or 'cursing' anyone else—her erratic 'outbreaks' and 'outbursts' were both very new and very uncontrollable to her as well. Also, willing to negotiate for food and shelter and information (and clothes, though she didn't hope for much from their fashion).

She said all this with her best smile, ready-to-run muscle tension, and a careful omission of her 'real' physical age being younger than she mentally presented. There had been plenty of time to think overnight when sleep wouldn't come; she'd decided that the potential benefits of pretending to be a child weren't worth the inevitable drawbacks. Sakura had never taken well to having her maturity questioned, and there was so much more she could do if acknowledged as being able to make her decisions.

The Torino humans had shown interest in her second claim. Her third claim was readily accepted as well, with them apparently assuming that she suffered from a rare and exotic disease that somehow temporarily spread through emitted pheromones instead. Wariness had apparently warred with hospitality, and the same spokesman as before—introducing himself as 'Shanba' and deeming her 'stranger' for now—invited her to stay in their village for the night, under appropriate guards, and to accomplish a task to gain their trust in the morning. (She reluctantly accepted a grass skirt, questionable loincloth, and a leafy cloak, accepting that anything else would tear, or cross sensibilities she wasn't ready to bend yet.) Library access was restricted until her completion of said task to their satisfaction, but just knowing that there _was_ a library greatly cheered her up.

Day three was spent on a crash-course of what native plants were _extremely_ dangerous to touch and which were safe to eat. And then on a trek through the forest, and a stake-out of the nest-tiered tree. She had to self-repair her cloak twice, and declined to think about the loincloth.

Day four, climbing said tree and avoiding beak jabs and claw swipes from suspicious birds, only to retreat to the ground for the night to rest and formulate a new plan of approach. She repaired both skirt and cloak, keenly feeling the absence of her lightly armored flak jacket.

Day five, accidentally turning _all_ the birds on or near the tree into chicks, and then figuring out how to turn them back. Following that, was a struggle for communication that eventually succeeded, through elaborate charades and scratch-drawn pictograms. She managed to convey that the humans wanted to harvest the myriad plantlife growing on the Tree's trunk. Sakura then had to defuse accusations of her deaging shenanigans being part of a poacher's plan to steal their eggs, as the long-memory-minded birds had apparently faced before. Resolving a misunderstanding of the Torino humans' implication in the poaching plot came next. She couldn't muster up the will to repair her clothes, since she was conversing with birds, anyway.

Day six, thank the Sage, was simply express-travelling back to the village via bird-carrier, and then explaining the resolution to the humans. She quite enjoyed the upgrade in accommodations that followed (as well as the replacement clothes).

It was an… unique experience. Politics and pleasantries at the side of Tsunade couldn't have taught her _this_ kind of diplomacy.

Day seven, to round off the first week, was getting folded into village routine, and beginning a blissful dive into their generously opened library archives. She'd fervently thanked the Sage then for keeping written language the same, having decided that a religious-equivalent revelation was no reason to break harmless habits.

Still constantly changing age, Sakura had offered her _edited_ story of the swirly fruit. Her correction of the 'rare disease' misconception was in the hopes that the medically advanced tribe would know of it. The best reference that many minds working together could find was an obscure journal record dating back decades, describing a supposedly mythical "fruit of the devil" that bestowed strange powers. It waxed poetic: "what came from the sea, returns to the sea."

In _completely unrelated_ events, the joy of getting an evening bath after unknown days of grime was somewhat ruined by her need to be saved from drowning ingloriously in a river.

Afterwards, with the goodwill of the Torino, "stranger no more, now friend Sakura!" acclimated to a new life. She learned, she trained, she adapted.

She grew. Although never as fast as she wished, in the _way_ she wanted.

.

.

It was a good three years before she left.

It was sheer chance that she wound up on Karate Island next,

 **.**

 **Sakura!Bonney: Part 2**

 **Diplomacy**

 **.**


	29. Bo2-5: grief

**.**

 **-B-**

 **.**

The instance she had a quiet moment to herself, she unpacked the emotions that'd welled up like drawn blood at her first acceptance of the words written on her arm. _'A new life, in a different world, where she could expect no return to her previous state of familiarity.'_

Sakura grieved for the loss of her previous life and all of the people and places she'd known. Anybody who could make crying look pretty was either trained to do so or faking it, and she was neither of those things. Perhaps out of compassion, or perhaps out of simple confusion, neither of the island's dominant populations approached her during her cathartic outpouring of _feeling_. Looking back, she felt a little silly over the minor crater she'd formed from slamming a fist over and over again into a patch of ground, but also pleased over this body's potential, and mostly just felt better.

(… Sakura didn't mourn for 'Jewelry Bonney', but she did feel a brief flash of… sympathy, perhaps. The girl was dead, or had never existed. She didn't know if there was anyone in this world to even remember her, except Sakura herself, who had—to take her own word for it—somehow rendered the identity unuseable.)

Afterwards, the nameless faceless _blameless_ grief didn't neatly vanish; she compartmentalized it again. This time, with the intention of never revisiting. Healthier to let it all fade into purely fond memories, rather than dwell too strongly and taint the entire matter with festering frustration. Healthier than the vast majority of alternative coping methods pioneered by other ninja, anyway. Admittedly, if there hadn't been a total lack of alcohol on the island, and if she hadn't been so unsure about how her 'true' immature body would be affected by early alcohol intake, perhaps her flirtations with the idea of alcoholism—what could she say, Tsunade was a bad influence and she knew firsthand that Shizune was an honest drunk—wouldn't have gone nowhere.

She'd never touched any of their 'recreational herbs' as a replacement. By the time the natives were friendly enough with her to offer, Sakura wasn't desperate enough for an escapist fantasy to take them up on it. She couldn't do anything more than choke on her bite of salad and weakly wheeze out a polite refusal, stifling her increasing amusement.

 **.**

 **Sakura!Bonney: Part 2.5**

 **Grief**

 **.**

* * *

 **A/N: Part 3 covers her timeskip actions on Torino, and introduces Karate Island and a canon character. Part 4 introduces a second canon character, and will hopefully cover her Karate Island timeskip and get her started on sailing adventures. Guess the character(s)?**


	30. Bo3: train

**.**

 **-Bo-**

 **.**

Sakura tried to help out around the island, at first. To be a complete freeloader made her intrinsically uncomfortable, although she wasn't worried about the tribe collecting on unspoken debt. She trusted her perceptiveness enough to believe that the natives were genuinely friendly and giving.

In fact, the Torino refused her initial offers of help, insisting she take all the time she needed to sort her mysterious 'devil fruit' symptoms out before doing anything else. …There was a nonzero chance that they said this because her presence would actively—if unintentionally—hinder any work efforts, as her 'outbursts' were now. Knowing this, Sakura didn't protest.

Grateful, though not entirely guilt-free, she'd accepted their suggestion. Privately, she resolved to rid herself of this handicap as soon as possible, to return some of the tribe's kindness. It was undoubtedly jarring to randomly deage and re-age, but none of the tribespeople had even entertained the idea of quarantining their guest to minimize the disturbance. They remained patient as she rapidly improved her control over purposeful 'power use', which still took several months. Fine-tuning her 'adjustments' took a while longer, but she eventually reached the level where she could reverse any increasingly rare accidents as easily as she breathed.

Once Sakura had figured out that her strange 'fruit ability' was partially influenced by subconscious desire but overridden by conscious will, the rough comparison to chakra control made her approach much more effective.

Some testing had also revealed to her some vague limits of her new power. Injuries and fatigue did not 'reset' when she changed age. Clothes, as she'd already learned firsthand, also didn't change. Only biological matter connected to an organism complex enough to have a brain was affected—no plantlife was harmed in the making of this data.

She could hold a transformation on herself indefinitely, with no more mental strain than a mindlessly basic henge; however, transforming others required them to stay within a certain range for her actively uphold the effect. Once 'released' but not actively 'undone', the transformations lasted for an inconclusive variable of time. No animals or kindly volunteering humans were harmed in the making of this data, either.

Even so, Sakura hadn't pushed her powers too far after accomplishing her goal of control. It took time away from alternative pursuits, of course. Both hers and the villagers, no matter how enthusiastic they seemed about helping research new bodily conditions. But she was also concerned about using an ability whose drawbacks she didn't entirely know. There was so little known about this 'devil's fruit' that she found it easy to think some sort of deadly tradeoff was possible. Allusions to demonic origins didn't exactly instill comfort.

.

.

Sakura did have other things to do, anyway, than simply play around with her newfound powers. Even if that 'play' was rather productive, there were equally, if not more, interesting opportunities open to her. Some plainly necessary skills to retrain into this fresh body, too.

Poison resistance re-training, for example, was a trip and a half. Yes, sometimes literally. The Torino's medical journals were extremely helpful in aiding this pursuit; her expectation that a new world would come with new toxins was proven correct. Sakura also took the chance to brush up on past medicinal skills and add on new and exotic knowledge. The Torino, focused on herbalism, were proud as well to proclaim her 'proficient' in that area before she left.

Her useful contributions gradually grew over time, in this way. Not only did she keep in practice with processing medicines from plants, she found an unique—if infrequently needed—niche on the island by offering her surgical expertise. Patients didn't come up often, as serious injuries rarely had reason to occur, but the occasional case—a surprising number of which were the usually-aloof birds—prevented her from getting rusty. Improvising the tools she needed for more advanced techniques was almost a fun challenge. A few months into the first year _displaced_ , Sakura had also deemed herself sufficiently physically prepared to persuade the tribespeople into letting her help out food stores by bringing back meat from hunts.

(The tribespeople themselves didn't really need the extra meat. She, however, certainly did. 'Helping out by hunting' was a polite fiction that alleviated her imposition on the village resources—a win-win situation. Sakura wasn't sure if this world's humans all experienced massive appetites as part of prepubescent growing pains, or if it was her Fruit's fault, but she was _always hungry._ It took all her previously instilled good manners to maintain her habits of neatly eating nowadays, instead of falling on her food like Naruto at Ichiraku's.)

Physical training had continued on after that, of course. She'd never stopped. Sakura was gratified to find that the totally sketchy 'powers-granting fruit' wasn't her only compensation for trading off chakra-use; this body's baseline parameters, perhaps as was simply the way of this world, were much more flexible than any Elemental Nations physique once chakra was factored out. It could go much farther with pure training—she eagerly pursued the recovery of her former famed strength.

A punishing daily routine had always been preached as the surest way to improve as a ninja (right after wanton bloodline theft). Practicing her personalized stretching routine, flexing through all the taijutsu katas she remembered, Konoha treerunning and push-ups and climbing the Tree and putting herself through shoreline slog-jogs quarter-submerged… etc. She was forced to stick to her child form while working out, after having figured out that her 'base' form was the only one who retained actual physical gains. It made logical sense to her, as it _was_ her 'true' form, but 'making sense' didn't mean she had to _like_ it. Thankfully, the Torino asked no questions.

The Torino were wonderful, really. So… _good-intentioned_ and _generous_. Naruto would think them hilarious. Sasuke would think the same, in a decidedly different way. Sakura firmly knew she could never repay their friendship. So many of their gestures were touching in their own way.

She had her own necklace of pink flowers. The more mechanically-minded had quickly rigged up a crude shower sprinkler system for her, early into her stay. Not only did they always spare time to answer her inquiries and volunteer in power-testing trials, but they were all so eager to teach anything she earnestly expressed interest in learning. (Although, that that feeling of pride in a student's accomplishments was something she could understand from her own gradually misting memories of hospital mentorship.)

With no new violent or political disaster encroaching, Sakura learned several craftmanship skills that she would never have had the time—or, honestly speaking, the desire—to learn as an active-duty ninja. It was more pleasant than she thought it'd be: weaving baskets and rough clothes, making paper out of plant pulp, binding book covers from complete scratch. A year and a half into her residency, long after she'd stopped spontaneously destroying her clothes via shapeshifting, she even discovered a more flexible solution to her clothing woes. The miraculous variety of strangely attributed flora on the island had never ceased to win her admiration; Torino's natural treasure trove got another point in Sakura's book when they yielded an extremely elastic plant whose fibers could be soaked, separated, and stitched into simple clothes. Distinctly leafy-looking shorts and a sleeveless shirt were the extent of her novice skills, but they satisfied her need for both relative modesty and self-sufficiency. The tribal weavers did a much better job, but she didn't want to bother them often. They were already bemused but tolerant of her insistence on a different style of dress, chalking it up to cultural differences.

.

.

She'd found the boat about a year into her stay. It was turned upside-down in an out-of-the-way cave tucked near the shoreline. The crude motor was rusted, and the fuel box completely dried empty. Neither the Torino nor the giant birds could offer suspicion as to where it had come from; they easily offered ownership to Sakura, the only one interested.

Though it'd taken a while, the boat had eventually been fixed up to useability. Sakura thought she'd done a pretty good job, considering she had only rudimentary knowledge of both motors and boats—the former scrounged from hospital equipment repair manuals, and the latter from the anecdotes of grateful Wave citizens and allied Mist ninja. The Torino tribe's mechanical expertise helped greatly in the motor area, and their herbal knowledge even aided in mixing up an alternative fuel.

At first, Sakura was a little nervous setting out from the island. The idea had been in her head since the very beginning, but though she'd never intended to reside there permanently, when confronted by the actual opportunity to leave, she found herself wanting for information about the outside world. The better to plan ahead for. After all, without the loyalty to a Hidden Village she'd grown up indoctrinated into, Sakura was rather at a loss for any future plans.

Her best approximates right now were to 'live' and 'treat it like a training trip without a destination'. A commendation for a 'strategic mind', as her teachers had always emphasized—at first to euphemize her lacking ability to all other areas, and then as genuine recognition—could only go so far without anything to build off of. The isolationist Torino turned up blanks here, sadly.

To add to her feelings of being unprepared to leave the safe island nest, if her intellectual knowledge of motors and boats was lacking, her practical expertise was even more so. For all the stunningly comprehensive and helpfully informative medical and herbology books the Torino humans had, they didn't exactly have much in the way of sailing advice or geography guides to offer. They fished with spears and nets and barely ever left the island. They only really knew of boats as traveling devices that foreigners used.

Of course, then they innocently revealed that the birds could usually fly them wherever they needed to go, in the rare occasions that someone had wanted to leave the island. Which rather undercut all of her transportation tensions.

But with her mind having been made up already about there being more left on Torino to learn, Sakura politely declined the bird-travel offer. For now. She reasoned that on a world apparently majority water, she had to learn sooner or later to get used to sailing. Better to start off on baby steps with a simple combination motor-rowboat—adjust to the motions. Perhaps when she decided to truly leave, she'd take the birds up on their offer… well, insofar as to be dropped off with the boat close to another populated land mass. She was trying to keep a relatively low profile for now, and being airdropped by giant birds with at least a local history of having their eggs poached was, as far as she could tell, not the attention-deflecting norm in this world.

Or maybe that was how all people traveled by. Maybe all inter-town commute was solely performed through giant birds. But that was the sort of assumption Sakura preferred not to act on until independently confirmed.

Shanba had made it clear that she was welcomed to stay as an honored guest for as long as she wanted to, of course. Still, even if there was no hurry to do so, Sakura was glad to have learned of her choice to leave. Leave and be able to return, preferably—which would require a different method than bird-travel—but then to be able to leave once more.

It wasn't just that she didn't want to impose for so long. Although that was certainly part of it. It was mainly that she knew it would always feel like an imposition. Sakura didn't belong in Torino, and, well, frankly the island was too small. The forest which she could cross in half a day—once she'd trained up her speed some—could only comfort her with nostalgia for so long before any hometown resemblance wore off.

Sometimes, staring at the sea that she couldn't cross, its endlessness was claustrophobic.

So the discovery of the boat, and subsequent prompted reveal of the 'chartered flight' option, elevated Sakura's mood fairly permanently. It was even rather entertaining, practicing taking small day trips into the immediate surrounding waters. She used the oars she found with the boat for her practice, not wanting to waste the alternative fuel, after knowing firsthand how many plants were pressed into a cupful of it. It made for excellent arm strength and reflex exercise—clean strokes and dodging accidental sprays of seawater became second habit.

.

.

Two more years passed after the boat's discovery, before Sakura finally decided it was time to leave Torino for broader horizons.

If questioned, she would sheepishly—though somehow with simultaneous shamelessness—admit that the timing was entirely because she'd finished memorizing their library.

The boat was repainted with water-repelling tree sap, and then strapped onto a bird's neck, left to dangle like a very strange amulet. Its tiny hold was stocked with useful medicines, leaf-wrapped food rations, water-storing plants, a large basket of the elastic plant fibers, a small dagger, and blankets. Sakura rejected a spear; she accepted a farewell feast and a new necklace of flowers.

" _Come back soon, friend Sakura! Who else gonna poke us with knives for our own good!?_ " the Torino tribe screamed in orchestrated synchronicity.

She could see a wavy line of brown and black be hoisted into the air: they were raising a wall of spears in send-off. The situation couldn't have been more different from the first time she'd seen a wall of spears on the beach, and the sudden realization of how time had flown smacked her breathless. For a beat.

" _Shannarou!_ _You_ _bet_ _this isn't goodbye forever!_ " Sakura yelled back, grinning wildly as she punched the air with one hand and clutched at her ride's scruff with the other. It wasn't anything close to an empty promise; she foresaw the need to return for more rare plants quite consistently, even disregarding the _want_ to return for friends she'd made and benefactors she wanted to thank.

Sakura made sure to watch the diminishing island from her perch on a bird's back. When she could no longer catch even a trace of the enormous Tree rising, only then did she recline leisurely. While waiting, she anticipatedly watched the ocean blue blur by. Oh, and snacked.

' _Somewhere with studying.'_ That had been her only specification. She was more curious than apprehensive to discover how the birds had deciphered her request; their chosen representative was obviously not able to tell her.

Speaking of speaking… "Caw! Caw caw!"

"Thanks for the heads-up, Mr. Bird!"

They were close to her destination, the bird meant. Sure enough, she could see a vaguely hilly island in the distance. Any closer, and somebody watching from the island might spot the bird acting oddly. As the bird carefully swooped down, nearly skimming the water, Sakura reached forward and cut the boat free. It landed with a minor splash, thankfully with everything in place.

In a practiced maneuver, she then slid down the tilted wing of the bird and landed in her boat with only a gentle rocking motion. Unfolding out of her instinctive rolling crouch, Sakura made sure to wave and shout an enthusiastically grateful goodbye to the bird. By the subtle feathered scar she'd run right over, she had now recognized it as a past patient. It dipped its head in acknowledgement, "caw"ed twice more, then turned on its previously broken wing and quickly disappeared into a dot in the sky.

Face aching with how fiercely she was beaming, Sakura steered her modest boat towards the wash of green. If she landed sneakily away from the docks, 'aged' herself much older, and covered any particularly identifying marks with robes fashioned out of draped blankets, she could finally find a social hub and pump some worldly knowledge…

She bit into a hunk of meat and began rowing.

.

.

Good news! Karate Island was basically the perfect training gauntlet.

An island populated almost entirely by schools of different martial arts styles, what better place to while away a few more years until 'true' adolescence could she ask for? The various dojos even traditionally offered room and board for their most promising students, saving her the minor inconvenience of coming up with enough currency for rent and basic expenses!

Bad news! Physical training… meant she was stuck in her 'true' form until she traveled islands again.

Low-profile, mythical fruits of the devil… Sakura had a feeling she'd be repeating those two phrases in her mind a lot in the near future.

 _Amusing_ news! The first dojo she dropped in on, clearly unimpressed by her bare feet, sun-darkened skin, choppy bobcut, and strangely-patterned clothes, demanded an admission test in answer to her 'impudent challenge'.

Or maybe it was the baby cheeks, guileless eyes, and frame of a roughly 8-10 year old girl that all her lean muscle couldn't hide. The boat of belongings she carried around like luggage likely didn't help first impressions. She'd barely had time to gather preliminary intel and shift to the appropriate age before deciding on a course on action; there hadn't been much more of point in waiting longer to make a better impression on a place she didn't plan on lingering for long in. She wasn't looking for specialized techniques taking years to unlock confidentiality before mastering; a very flexible and varied understanding of all the different intermediate stages was her aim. 'Training gauntlet' was quite accurate for her intentions.

The admission test was to fight the School of the Grasshopper Style's strongest student. Sakura should probably feel a little bad about how she was going to destroy any ordinary competition her 'true' age. She didn't. Mostly because she had more restraint than that, okay?

The blond kid who was beckoned forth stood stoically before her on the mats. By first glance, he was only a few years older than her 'true' age. She had to wonder how he even saw anything through that wavy mane most people called 'bangs'. The kid seemed confident, unhurried. But he didn't lower his guard.

Sakura quirked her lips. She flexed her calf tendons and shifted her stance slightly.

"My most promising disciple," the dojo master announced gravely. The hand-scythes holstered at his hips swayed as he gestured for them to bow. The blond's head turned towards him, though she couldn't see his eyes to tell if he was looking at his teacher or the blades.

With a grand flourish of his sleeve, the man announced, "Challenger Haruno Sakura versus Defender Killer, ring-out or first to surrender! Begin… now!"

Neither moved. Killer, because he was likely waiting for an opportunity. Sakura, because somebody named this kid _Killer_ —

It took all her willpower and finely attuned mental control to keep a straight face. Nobody in the Academy, what with a child's fragile ego being what it was, would have appreciated their sparring opponent laughing in their face before a match. And Sakura truly bore no grudge against this pure stranger to want to inflict that sort of psychological attack on him. It would be rather unfair, with her ambiguously indeterminately older mind. But—

"Killer, show 'er who's boss!" another disciple cheered from the background.

She couldn't help it.

Sakura let slip a smile as she dodged his opening hand, countering his fast frontal jab with a swift sweep of her leg that he jumped over just as smoothly while whirling back around to unleash a barrage of strikes—

Her smile widened. She knew who she wanted as a sparring partner from this school.

.

.

In the end, their speed and agility was about even, but her strength and endurance remained superior. Killer went down after a few solid hits, interspersed between minutes of wearing him down gently. No need to traumatize her chosen pseudo-rival so soon. He gave her a nod and a slight smirk as he conceded.

The dojo master attempted to raise a counter-argument, but ran out of reasons when she finished off his last disciple in a row—a teenaged male who had quite a bit of bulk on her. She was sweating moderately, and breathing in measured pace, but her spine stood still and straight.

There was perhaps a glint of respect in his eyes when he accepted her 'application'. "Mornings start at dawn, Haruno."

 **.**

 **Sakura!Bonney: Part 3**

 **Train**

 **.**

* * *

 **A/N: Oh, look! *plays loose with honorific faithfulness to distract from the casual Karate Island worldbuilding* Did you expect a young Killer? Is he believable?**


	31. Bo4: conversation

**.**

 **-Bo-**

 **.**

How did aging work? Was it a purely physical thing? A product of hormones and shortening telomeres? How about mental, emotional? Or perhaps a loss of innocence, a disillusionment of ideals…?

She'd been told before that she thought too much. It had stopped being antagonistic and become an affectionate teasing around the time she and Ino had reconciled. Ruefully, Sakura thought that this much hadn't changed in her character.

"What's with the long face, dear?"

 _Wondering how my perception of age has been distorted by a reality shift I don't remember, an extra life and body than I was prepared for, and a bloodline limit-equivalent of biological temporal manipulation. Questioning if I feel older than I was when I first woke up on that beach, or just more experienced. Contemplating if I'll forever think like a teenager, or am already thinking like an adult and haven't noticed, or will simply take more years than are neatly linear to feel a difference. Accepting that I was previously in denial about the depth of my 'true' form dysphoria, until practice—born partly of it being too much of a hassle to keep up a separate identity, on an island where too many knew her as a prepubescent, just to satisfy her own vanity—acclimatized me to a healthier perspective. Realizing that three more years have passed in this world without fanfare. Noticing that I barely even think of it as the 'new' world anymore._

"Oh, nothing. Just feeling a bit hungry. This the last of them, Miss Vellik!" Sakura cheerfully—and truthfully—reported, dismissing the rest of her thoughts as irrelevant. In conclusion with her last line, she carefully set down a stamped crate in an empty space of the bookshop's backroom.

The old woman smiled, wrinkling her facial tapestry of lines even further. A boney hand reached out to pat her on the shoulder, and then drop a pouch of coins. "You work too hard. Eat more! Enjoy your youth! Thank you for helping with the stock today. I'll let you know when my next shipment comes in. Or when your journal subscription comes in! Oh, and thank you again for that miracle salve and the circulation advice; I've said it before and I'll say it again, dear, but you're simply wasted on all that violent nonsense."

"So you've said," she observed politely. Sakura caught her mover's payment with one hand and smiled back in thanks, dipping her head briefly in a shallow bow. This world's people seemed much more casual with societal conventions in general; she'd gradually loosened up her manners in response, but some forms of respect were too ingrained into her conscience.

After a few more goodbye exchanges, a detour to the marketplace, Sakura was soon on her way to Killer's dorm with groceries-laden arms.

.

.

She had moved out of the Grasshopper school half a year after she'd entered, almost as abruptly both ways. Convincing a second dojo to accept her after her 'quitting' had been difficult, but she was stubborn and smart. As her school-hopping continued and became almost an infamous tradition, she found it easier and easier to run through the cycle of acceptance-train-familiarized-transfer.

Oh, there were definitely still those dojo masters who disliked her because of her clear disinclination to permanently return any investment by becoming an instructor through the senior disciple track. But even they grew to like, or at least tolerate, her presence; on a short-term basis she was almost the best student they could ask for, which was rewarding in its own way. There was also always the temptation to 'win' by being school who managed to convince her to stay. (The levels of pettiness that interschool rivalry reached was inspiring.) It didn't hurt that she was also a fairly hefty advantage in the annual multi-school bragging-rights ego competition— ah, _student skill display tournament_. Widely acknowledged was that she and Killer shared the informal top strength ranks.

Killer, who had stayed on. By now, he'd progressed quite highly through the advanced Grasshopper Style techniques. As a more senior disciple, he still resided on his school's property, but had been promoted a few months ago to his own private living quarters. Which in practice simply meant no roommates to complain about his intense training or terrible drums-playing, as well as a larger room.

The upgraded apartment came with a small kitchenette, however. And as soon as she'd discovered that Killer cooked for a hobby, she'd happily harassed him into cooking for her whenever she dropped by to visit… provided she brought the ingredients as stipulated. He wasn't a very good cook, just an amateur; but he was more interested in actively improving than she was, and it both saved money on food and encouraged his interests outside of pure fighting, a win-win for her. (Also, her—now normalized sensation of—a never-ending appetite wasn't too picky.)

Sakura preferred to not have a single-minded battle-maniac as her only accessible friend. There was only so limited of a conversation or activity pool one could take. It had been fine for in-school sparring partners, but it made things too dull as friends. Thankfully, it hadn't been too hard to change from 'mutually-respectful sparring partners' to 'socializing classmates close in age and skill' to 'friends-with-violent-benefits who met up outside of school (a necessity when one of them changed schools like the weather)'. She'd learned since her mistakes in approach with Ino and Sasuke, alright? And it turned out that Killer was quite easy to talk to; he was hiding a sea of snark under that mop of hair. He never batted an eye at the intelligence she decided against attempting to hide—though honestly, who could tell if he did, buried under those bangs—and they shared a comfortable mutual appreciation of each others' martial ability and adaptive wit.

As she climbed the hilly path to the Grasshopper dojo, she passed by a scenic view of the docks.

She'd picked up the crates there for her bookstore errand today. Though her room and board were usually covered by her current training affiliation, Sakura had begun planning ahead for the future. Well, somewhat. The only thing she was really sure of on her agenda was to revisit Torino Island with gratitude gifts after she decided to move on from Karate Island. And perhaps after that, to see for herself some of the sights she'd read about. Sakura wasn't someone who had a strong impetus to explore, but she did have a compulsion to learn, and a sudden flood of free time.

But to do any of that, she either needed money to buy supplies, or a reckless soul and expert thievery skills. So Sakura had started picking up odd jobs around town—mostly heavy-lifting and running messages and 'hometown remedy' medical aid, all able to productively double as training. Funding an active snack budget also helped satiate her worst hunger cravings when she was too lazy to make a return trip or too unwilling to trouble the tiny dojo cooking staff.

(She was still undecided on whether to buy a ship legitimately or simply steal one off the docks on her way out to fence when convenient. The former would take a painful chunk out of her savings. The latter would maybe risk a record… but she was beginning to think that pink hair wasn't so uncommon that she couldn't simply rely on aged-up looks to distract from any connection to 'Jewelry Bonney', whose pursuers she had found no sign of either.)

Occasionally, she did some unloading work down by the docks, but job competition proved fierce enough that she didn't bother to go for the slim pickings anymore. There were more lucrative opportunities originating in town. Sakura still visited frequently for other purposes; when wheedling lessons on sailing out of the seasoned sea dogs was done for the day, she enjoyed eavesdropping in bars. The town library and bookstore were still better for educating her on the state of the basic and basic geography and sciences and the like, but the bars were where she heard accents to trace and mimic, embellished rumors and prejudices to analyze, and tall tales about legendary devil fruits to hold in a dismayed sigh at.

'Legend' was at least somewhat of an upgrade in credibility from mere 'mythical'. But the only eyewitness accounts of existing wielders were all the same ol' 'friend of a relative of a convoluted chain of relation back to me'.

Passing the scenic view swiftly traded it in for a view of the school—unchanged in appearance since the day she'd first dragged her boat of belongings onto its grounds. Sakura called greetings to the faces she recognized as she confidently wound her way around the internal corridors. Finally coming to a stop in front of a particular set of doors, she simply called out another greeting through the thin wood, rather than set down any of the bags in her hands.

Killer opened the door. "Well, come in then. Good, you brought lunch. What's on sale?"

"Not peperoncino," Sakura informed him in as equally and purposefully bland of a tone. She stepped over the threshold.

.

.

"I'll be leaving this place behind in a few more years, I think," he told her over lunch.

Sakura blinked and smiled, happy for him. "Wanting independence? Let me know when you have a set date in mind; we can go apartment-hunting together, I think I can get you a discount on a few places if you don't mind nosy landladies."

"No," the blond clarified, "I mean I'm leaving the dojo."

At this, she was slightly more curious, but still not really surprised.

"Well, we both already knew that you're close to mastering all that the Grasshopper Style has to teach," she mused philosophically. "I always thought you meant to stay on as a permanent disciple and eventually take over the place, though—Caeli-sensei favors you enough that you're prime choice to inherit. So what do you plan to do instead then? Start your own school? Become a chef? Join the Marines?"

The last one was a joke. Killer had never thought well of the local law-keeping forces, and after witnessing their incompetence for her own, Sakura had to agree. Sure enough, at her airy suggestion, he wrinkled his nose in mock offense.

She just laughed. Her mouth closed on another forkful of pasta. Killer had a passion for noodles in general that warranted comparison to a certain other blond's passion for ramen in specific. When it came his choice to pick a restaurant after a spar—which all their hang-outs inevitably involved, in ninja-style bonding—it always featured at least one such specialty. He'd suggested a new place a few days ago that they hadn't had occasion to go to yet, raving (in a more subdued, Killer-esque fashion) over their highly recommended curry udon with sharply controlled arm gestures—

"Piracy," Killer stated calmly. Killer, who had never before expressed interest in crime, even if he'd seemed plenty disinterested in the opposite.

Sakura swallowed her spaghetti before speaking. She took the time to gather her thoughts. Mind racing to mull over his sudden change of heart, she asked mildly, "What brought this on?"

"I met a guy."

Of all the cliches she didn't think she'd ever hear from him. Of course, given context, he likely didn't mean it that way… but then again, he was in the early throes of puberty now. She knew it was wishful thinking, but it would be nice to have a puppy crush or _something_ to hold over his head. Killer was too level-headed to really rise to any bait outside of battle, and even then it was 50/50 if she'd lose her temper first. Which was a pity, since he was her only friend, not just friendly acquaintance, on Karate. Though she thought about her past life less and less as she lived longer and longer in this one, sometimes some little detail snuck up on her. Sakura sort of missed having comrades to swap breakroom gossip about and mercilessly tease about their interests.

Well, there was always his painful drums-playing…

Nevertheless, it was fine for a joke.

"Oh _did_ you," she leered meaningfully, swirling more strands around the tines of her fork with one hand, and propping up her chin with a fist made of the other.

Killer snorted. He started tasting his own work, mirroring her strand-swirling.

"I'm rolling my eyes right now," he informed her candidly. "You know that's not what I meant. Also, the kid's a baby—I think he might even be a little younger than you. Ten, eleven-ish." He paused. "A really angry baby who could kick my ass."

Now it was her turn to assume a look of mock offense. "Hey, you calling _me_ a child then? This child can kick your ass too, y'know. Want a reminder?"

Sakura didn't really mean it—there was food to take the edge off the gnawing hunger right now—but she had nothing much planned for the afternoon anyway, apart from more training. It was a rest day for her currently enrolled school—a style focused on using superior endurance to turn one's opponent's strength against them. She rather liked it, and thought she might stay a bit longer than usual to refine her understanding before 'graduating' to another.

Killer, on the other hand, did look a little tempted. There had been less and less competition for him to find on the island as they both aged and her generalization (and superior stats) began winning more often than not over his specialization (and advantage of bladed weaponry). Which was part of why she was honestly happy for him to have found an apparent additional sparring partner. Variety in opponents would help him improve faster than he was right now, very close to stagnating. Even if another, larger part was… _concerned_ about who could be charismatic enough to influence the life goals of a person she knew to be as stubbornly independent as he was slyly sarcastic and deceptively reasonable. (Killer's deceptiveness was unintentional; people simply didn't expect someone who first considered alternative conflict resolution to be so completely ruthless when moved to violence.

"Well, you're a growing girl after well, I'd hate to be the one to pull you away from important meals. I can wait the minute it'll take you to finish off the food," he drawled.

Sakura simultaneously beamed sunnily and performed a rude hand gesture she'd picked up from the dockworkers. Rude hand gestures had apparently evolved into entirely different branches of vulgarity through her two worlds, giving her the joy of learning them twice. She would've done it double-handed for extra effect, but she was still making her way through the veritable tub of spaghetti. The easy-to-make-in-bulk quality of most noodle dishes was, she had to admit, a point in their favor for this life's physique.

Intending a prompt, she trailed off, "This kid who converted you to apparent piracy…?"

Killer complied without resistance. As he spoke, he reached for a bottle of dried chili flakes and seasoned his pasta. "I met him by the scrapyard. He must have arrived on the island pretty recently, maybe with that merchant ship that came a week ago; I didn't recognize him from off the street anywhere. So I'm just minding my own business, thinking about how I'm supposed to lead hand-scythe practice the next morning, when this kid just marches straight up to me—all scowls and attitude—plants himself in front of me, waves a wrench in my face and demands a fight.

"'Why?' I ask the punk. Kid glares up at me under these giant goggles and a thornbush of hair—literally a bloodied porcupine, you'll see—and says, completely serious, 'The next pirate king needs a strong crew and you're the second-strongest fighter on an island known for it. I'm recruiting. You got a problem with that?' And there was this _look_ in his eyes… like he was just daring me to answer yes…"

Killer fell silent. Sakura kept eating while she watched him visibly chew over a memory—even with only half his face truly visible, and the other half preoccupied in physically chewing over spaghetti. He finally concluded, "…I can't explain it. But I really thought for a moment that this kid—he was going to reach the top or wreck the world trying."

"You were intimidated by an eleven-year-old?" she queried in light disbelief.

"A goddamn eleven-year-old intimidated me for a _second_ ," he agreed easily, before correcting, "and then I was just impressed with his guts.

"After that I asked a few questions of course, like 'what the hell' and 'where's your parents' and, you know, 'excuse me what do you mean second-strongest' and he just pretty much waved it all off to say that I seemed more dedicated and therefore more suitable for first mate. And then we fought and he won—barely—and I thought this kid was interesting enough that I wanted to see where he went. There was a 'blood and glory' speech thrown in there somewhere.

"So then I basically promised to be his first mate if he never lost to me for the time until we leave Karate Island. I think he intends to hop around the South Blue for a while to gather a better crew and train up some before moving on to something bigger. Do pirates need to practice piracy? Anyway, so yeah. I met a guy."

She didn't discount the probability that his casual summary had just been to annoy her. Still: "You're terrible at storytelling," Sakura muttered, distracted. All that was quite interesting, but her attention had remained snagged on— "'You'll see'? You're planning on introducing us?"

"Tomorrow at that new udon place," he confirmed matter-of-factly.

"What if I'm busy?" she tested idly.

"You're not. We were going to meet up tomorrow anyway. Hey, fair warning—if he thinks I'm only second-strongest—" He sounded slightly miffed, but not resentful. "—there's no question he'll challenge you tomorrow, too."

Sakura raised an eyebrow, amused. She broke away from steadily refilling her bowl to take a sip of water. "Thanks for the heads-up. Can I get a name to go with just 'kid'?"

"Sure." His chin tilted up, lips quirking. "Kid's called 'Kid'."

"…"

"No, I'm serious. Well, he did tell me to just call him 'Captain' if I wanted, but that's not happening until we set sail seriously or he hits a growth spurt. And, oh yeah, I knew you'd be interested in this part, you've always been so nerdy over anything related—"

Killer pretended to muse thoughtfully. He was just dragging out a silence for dramatic effect now, the asshole. Sakura stared at him dead-eyed while she kept eating without needing to look, trusting her hand-eye coordination to pull it off.

"—he has a Devil Fruit power," he relented. The capitalized emphasis was audible. There was an expectant sort of air around him. She likely disappointed with her reaction, then.

"…You're sure?"

"He made his toy robot trip me and then assembled a 'fuck off'-big robot from spare scrapmetal to distract me from the disembodied metal arms all reaching for me. It was great agility training. Yeah, I'm pretty fucking sure it wasn't anything natural."

"You never know. And no need to brag. I'll arm-wrestle you any day, see how agility helps you then."

"It would in actual wrestling if you didn't fight dirty."

"As if you actually know 'actual wrestling' anyway, Mr. 'Epitome-of-a-Fair-Fight-I'm-certain'."

"True. Okay, just—" Killer sobered. "—Give the kid a chance, you'll understand what I mean."

She hummed neutrally. This was clearly, in inexplicably, of some importance to him. Her fork clanged against porcelain. "I'll reserve judgement for now. So, spar? I want to see if that countermove works if I interrupt it before finalized."

"You need an after-meal workout to help that black hole you call 'digestion'?" he shot back dryly.

Sakura smiled sweetly, eyes slipping shut. "One day you're going to comment on the wrong person's diet, who won't be as forgiving and kindly-tempered as I obviously am, and 'Killer' be 'killed'."

Killer just went still in a way that implied he was rolling his eyes again, and stood up from the table. "Whatever," he said casually. "Same rules as usual: biggest eater brings groceries and washes the dishes. Catch you in the training yard in ten."

"Have fun molesting your blades!" she called after him tauntingly, knowing that he'd undoubtedly be attending to weapons maintenance in the meantime.

"Thanks, I will!" he called back, unruffled. "I'll think of you as I do!"

Sakura performed an eye-roll of her own, fond as it was. Perhaps this 'Kid' would be more fun to get a rise out of.

 _Well_ , she thought as she scraped the huge bowl clean of its last scraps, licking sauce stains off the serving spoon, _like I said. I'll reserve judgement. For now. Who knows, maybe I'll see whatever it is Killer sees in an eleven-year-old scrappy little shit…_

.

.

Less than twenty-four hours later, Sakura was sure that if she ever set sail with one Eustass Kid, they would either kill each other or she'd kill him trying. (No, not herself. What was the point in that? _Him_.) Even with Killer hypothetically on-board to moderate.

Okay, that was an exaggeration. This was still just a literal kid, half bravado and half bitterness plastered over an obviously sensitive ego. The brat had years left to grow up and change his ways into a decent human being who valued human life and all that.

So just give it a few years before she saw herself really ready to kill him, then.

' _Scrappy little shit' was right._

 **.**

 **Sakura!Bonney: Part 4**

 **Conversation**

 **.**


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